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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE HELEN JACKSON 
YEAR-BOOK 




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HE I. FN JArKSON 
YhAK-bUUK 



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189S 



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Copyright, 1895, 
By Roberts Brothers. 



2Inibfrsitg ^Srcss: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Full -page Designs .... By tmh Bayard. 
Vignette Titles By E. H. Garrett. 



3Panuatp* 



Always a night from old to new! 
Night and the healing balm of sleep ! 
Each morn is New Year's morn come true, 
DAorn of a festival to keep. 
All nights are sacred nights to make 
Confession and resolve and prayer ; 
All days are sacred days to wake 
New gladness in the sunny air. 
Only a night from old to new ; 
Only a sleep from night to morn. 
The new is hut the old come true ; 
Each sunrise sees a new year born. 

New Year's Morning. 



3|anttar^ i. 

..." Choose ye this day whom ye will serve " 
is a text good for every morning. 

The Ready-to-Halts. 



3|anttar^ 2. 

... I have wondered whether the happiest mortal 
could point to one single moment and say, " At that 
moment there was nothing in my life which I would 
have had changed." I think not. 

The Descendants of Nabal. 



3|anttar^ 3. 

... It is not in our power to confer honor or 
bring dishonor on the illustrious dead. 

We ourselves, alone, are dishonored when we fail 
in reverence to them. 

Father Junipero and His Work. 



lo Tbe Helen Jackson 



31anuar^ 4. 

Like a blind spinner in the sun, 

I tread my days ; 
I know that all the threads will run 

Appointed ways ; 
I know each day will bring its task, 
And, being blind, no more I ask. 

I know not why, but 1 am sure 

That tint and place 
In some great fabric to endure 
Past time and race 
My threads will have ; so from the first. 
Though blind, I never felt accurst .... 
I know He set me here, — and still, 
And glad, and blind, I wait His will. 

Spinning. 



Year-Book. 



II 



. . . Climate is to a country what temperament is 
to a man, — Fate. 

Outdoor Industries in Southern California. 



3f|anuar^ 6. 

. . . In the time of blossoms, an almond orchard, 
seen from a distance, is like nothing so much as a 
rosy-white cloud, floated off a sunset and spread on 
the earth. 

Seen nearer, it is a pink snowstorm, arrested and 
set on stalks, with an orchestra buzz of bees filling 
the air. 

Ibid. 



Jlanuar^ 7. 

... The rudiments of good behavior have to be 
chiefly negative at the outset, like Punch's advice to 
those about to marry, -- " Don't." 

The Descendants of Nabal. 



1 2 The Helen Jackson 



3(|anuar^ 8. 

... If it be true, as some poets think, that every 
spot on earth is full of poetry, then it is certainly also 
true that each place has its own distinctive measure ; 
an indigenous metre, so to speak, in which, and in 
which only, its poetry will be truly set or sung. . . . 
There are surely woods which are like stately sonnets, 
and others of which the truth would best be told in 
tender lyrics; brooks which are jocund songs, and 
mountains which are Odes to Immortality. 

Chester Streets. 



3|anuar^ 9. 

. . . Pennilessness is not poverty, and ownership 
is not possession. 



Choice of Colors. 



Year-Book. 13 



Jlanuar^ 10. 

. . . The ship that bore 

My loved from me Hes where she lay before ; 

My heart grows sick within me as I pray 

The silent skipper, morn by morn, if he 

Will sail before the night. With patient tread 

I bear him all my goods. I cannot see 

What more is left that could be stripped from me, 

But still the silent skipper shakes his head : 

Ah me ! I think I never shall be dead ! 

My Ship. 



3|anuar^ u. 

. . . Grief and joy do not alter shape or sort. 
Love and love's losses and hurts are the same 
yesterday, to-day, and forever. 



Chester Streets. 



14 The Helen Jackson 



31anuar^ 12. 

. . . " In " the mountains is a phrase we have 
come to use carelessly when we mean among them. 
But it is a significant thing that we say " in " and do 
not say *' among." 

Among the Rocky Mountains it is especially sig- 
nificant. Hour by hour one sinks and rises and 
climbs and descends in labyrinths of wedged hills. 
Each hour you are hemmed in by a new circle of 
peaks, among which no visible outlet appears ; and 
each hour you escape, mount to a new level, and are 
again circled by a different and more glorious horizon. 
You come to feel that you yourself are, as it were, 
a member of the mountain race; the sky is the 
family roof, and you and they are at home together 
under it. This it is to be " in " the mountains. 

Boulder Canyon. 



Year-Book. 15 



3|anuar^ 13. 

... Of all the splendid promise and wondrous 
development on the California coast to-day, Fran- 
ciscan friars were the first founders. 

Father Junipero and His Work. 



iflanuar^ 14. 

... It is strange how sure civilized peoples are, 
when planning and legislating for savages, to forget 
that it has always taken centuries to graft on or 
evolve out of savagery anything like civilization. 

Ibid. 



^lanuar^ is. 

. . . The silence of the plaza was in itself a 

memorial service, with locust blossoms swinging 

incense. 

Ibid. 



1 6 The Helen Jackson 



3|anuai:^ 16. 

My share ! To-day men call it grief and death ; 

I see the joy and life to-morrow ; 

I thank our Father with my every breath 

For this sweet legacy of sorrow. 

My Legacy. 



31anuar^ 17. 

... We went up into the grand Hall of Council, 
and saw Tintoretto's great picture of Paradise, the 
largest picture on canvas in the world. I should 
hope so. 

. . . And what do you say to it for a conception of 
heaven, when I tell you that even at that size it is 
crowded with figures; packed, jammed, wedged, 
they are, — the saints of Tintoretto. 

I would rather be any kind of a sinner in any 
other place where there was elbow-room. 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



Year- Book. 17 



3|anuar^ la 

... It has appeared to me that men becoming 
guardians of bees acquire a peculiar calm philosophy, 
and are superior to other farmers and outdoor work- 
ers. It would not seem unnatural that the profound 
respect they are forced to entertain for insects so 
small and so wholly at their mercy should give them 
enlarged standards in many things ; above all, should 
breed in them a fine and just humility toward all 
creatures. 

Outdoor Industries in Southern California. 



3|anttar^ 19. 

... Oh! if the world could only stop long 

enough for one generation of mothers to be made 

all right, what a millennium could be begun in thirty 

years ! 

The Descendants of Nabal. 



1 8 The Helen Jackson 



31anuar^ 20. 

. . . The best things in life seem always snatched 
on chances. The longer one lives and looks back, 
the more he realizes this, . . . until one comes to 
have serious doubts whether there be not a truer 
philosophy in the *' toss-up " test than in any other 
method. 

Chance Days in Oregon. 



3Ianuar^ 2L 

. . . There is not so misnamed a piece of water 
on the globe as the Pacific Ocean, nor so unex- 
plainable a delusion as the almost universal impres- 
sion that it is smooth sailing there. 

It is British Channel and North Sea and off the 
Hebrides combined. . . . 

Ibid. 



Year- Booh 19 



Jlanuar^ 22. 

TWO TRUTHS. 

" Darling," he said, " I never meant 
To hurt you ; " and his eyes were wet. 

" I would not hurt you for the world : 
Am I to blame if 1 forget ? " 

" Forgive my selfish tears," she cried, 
" Forgive ! I knew that it was not 

Because you meant to hurt me, sweet, — 
I knew it was that you forgot ! " 

But all the same, deep in her heart 
Rankled this thought, and rankles yet, - 

*' When love is at its best, one loves 
So much that he cannot forget." 



20 The Helen Jackson 



31anuar^ 23. 

... If it were proposed to any man to go into an 
apothecary's shop and take from the big jars on the 
shelves . . . carbonates, sulphates, silicates, and chlo- 
rides, dissolve them in his bath-tub, and then proceed 
to soak himself in the water, absorbing the drugs 
through his million-pored skin, he would probably 
see the absurdity and the risk of the process. 

But, because Nature, for some mysterious purpose, 
has seen fit to brew these concoctions in the bowels 
of the earth, which spits them out as fast as it can, 
men jump at the conclusion that they are meant for 
healing purposes, and that one cannot drink too 
much of them, or stay in them too long. 

Georgetown and the "Terrible Mine." 



Year- Book, 21 

3|anuaii:^ 24. 

... No amount of Blackstone can give such an 
idea of law as a month of prison. 

The Ready-to-Halts. 



Jlanuar^ 25. 

. . . The truth is, the stronger, better-trained will 
a man has, the less obstinate he will be. Will is of 
reason ; obstinacy of temper. 



Ibid. 



Idanuar^ 26. 

. . . A conservatory filled chiefly with rare orchids, 
like an enchanted aviary of humming-birds, arrested 
on the wing . . . 

Chester Streets. 

iflanuar^ 27. * 

. . . Learn . . . 

That publicans and sinners may be saints ! 

The Abbot Paphnutius. 



22 The Helen Jackson 



3|anuai^ 28. 

OUTWARD BOUND. 

The hour has come. Strong hands the anchor raise ; 

Friends stand and weep along the fading shore, 

In sudden fear lest we return no more, 

In sudden fancy that he safer stays 

Who stays behind ; that some new danger lays 

New snare in each fresh path untrod before. 

Ah, foolish hearts ! in fate's mysterious lore 

Is written no such choice of plan and days : 

Each hour has its own peril and escape ; 

In most familiar things' familiar shape 

New danger comes without or sight or sound ; 

No sea more foreign rolls than breaks each morn 

Across our thresholds when the day is born : 

We sail, at sunrise, daily, ** outward bound." 



Year-Book. 23 



idanuar^ 29. 

. . . These eternal, unalterable snow-peaks will be 
as eternal and unalterable factors in the history of the 
country as in its beauty to the eye. 

Their value will not come under any head of things 
reckonable by census, statistics, or computation, but it 
will be none the less real for that ; it will be an ele- 
ment in the nature and character of every man and 
woman born within sight of the radiant splendor. 

Chance Days in Oregon. 



Klanuar^ 30. 

... It is not intended that we shall be very 

comfortable. 

There is a terrible amount of depravity in animate 

and inanimate things. 

The Descendants of Nabal. 



^4 Year-Book. 



3(|anuar^ 3L 

. . . Marble and canvas and parchment league in 
vain to keep green the memory of him who did not 
love and consecrate by his life-blood, in fight or in 
song, the soil where he trod. 

But for him who has done this, — who fought 
well, sang well, — the morning cloud, and the wild 
rose, and broken blades of grass under men's feet, 
become immortal witnesses, . . . and in the inalien- 
able loyalty of Nature bear testimony to-day to their 
lover. 

This is the greatest crown of the hero and the poet. 

A Burns Pilgrimage. 



jfe6tuarp» 



. . . Small trace now of any mans landmark, 
by wall or fence ; no color hut white and no shape 
but snow, to any shrub or tree or wood ; looking 
out, we perceived that no man could any more tell 
us of Labrador or Greenland : they cannot be more 
than the whole of winter ; the whole of winter lay 
between the horizon and our doorstep, 

A Glimpse of Country Winter. 



IFebruar^ i. 

. . . The hardest way is the best way. 



Bergen Days. 



iFebmar^ 2. 

. . . Really one of the great pleasures of foreign 
travel is the English one hears spoken ; and it is a 
pleasure for which we no doubt render a full equiva- 
lent in turn when we try speaking in any tongue 
except our own. But it is hard to conceive of any 
intelligible English French or German being so droll 
as German or French English can be, and yet be 
perfectly intelligible. 

Polite creatures that they all are, never to smile 
when we speak their language! 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



2S The Helen Jackson 



iFebruar^ 3. 

. . . Nobody will ever, by pencil or brush or pen, 
fairly render the beauty of the mysterious, undefined, 
undefinable chaparral. Matted, tangled, twisted, piled, 
tufted, — everything is chaparral. ... It is the most 
exquisite carpet surface that Nature has to show for 
mountain fronts or canyon sides. Not a color that 
it does not take ; not a bloom that it cannot rival ; a 
bank of cloud cannot be softer, or a bed of flowers 
more varied of hue. 

Outdoor Industries in Southern California. 



iFebmar^ 4. 

O, the years I lost before I knew you, 

Love ! 
O, the hills I climbed and came not to you, 

Love! 



At Last. 



Year-Book. 29 



. . . Tyranny can make liars and cheats out of 
the honestest souls. 

Ramona. 

iFebruar^ 6. 

. . . The unearthly hour of 5 A.M., — an hour at 
which all virtues ooze out of one ; even honesty out 
of cabmen. 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 

ifebmari^ 7. 

... His love of books and his passionate love of 
beauty combined with his poverty to hedge him 
about more effectually than miles of desert could 
have done. 

Mercy Philbrick's Choice. 



ifebruar^ 8. 

. . . There is no sight in the world so hard for 
lonely, homeless people to see, as the sight of the 
lighted windows of houses after nightfall. 



Ibid. 



30 The Helen Jackson 

jFrbruar^ 9. 

TIDES. 

O patient shore, that canst not go to meet 

Thy love, the restless sea, how comfortest 

Thou all thy loneliness ? Art thou at rest. 

When, loosing his strong arms from round thy feet, 

He turns away ? Know'st thou, however sweet 

That other shore may be, that to thy breast 

He must return ? And when, in sterner test, 

He folds thee to a heart which does not beat. 

Wraps thee in ice, and gives no smile, no kiss 

To break long wintry days, still dost thou miss 

Naught from thy trust ? Still wait, unfaltering. 

The higher, warmer waves which leap in spring ? 

O sweet, wise shore, to be so satisfied ! 

O heart, learn from the shore ! Love has a tide ! 



Year- Book, 31 



iFebmar^ 10. 

. . . Who of us is not in prison ? Who of us is 
not Hving out his time of punishment ? Law holds 
us all in its merciless fulfilment of penalty for sin ; 
disease, danger, work separate us, wall us, bury us. 

Friends of the Prisoners. 



iFebmat^ 11. 

. . . There is no fixed day gleaming for us in the 
future when our term of sentence will expire and we 
shall regain freedom. It may be to-morrow ; but it 
may be threescore years away. 

Meantime, we bear ourselves as if we were not in 

prison. We profess that we choose, we keep our 

fetters out of sight, we smile, we sing, we contrive to 

be glad of being alive, and we take great interest in 

the changing of our jails. 

Ibid. 



32 The Helen Jackson 

iFebruar^ 12. 

. . . Kradsuld is Norwegian for " shoddy," and 
sounds worlds more respectable, I am sure. 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



j?ebmar^ 13. 

. . . The thousandth time and the first are alike 

to all true lovers of science, — to all true lovers in the 

world, for that matter. 

The Valley of Gastein. 



iFrtmar^ 14. 

... My strongest will 
Finds stronger fate stand side by side 
With it, its utmost eflforts conquering still 
With such swift might, the dust in which I lie 
Scarce quivers with my struggle and my pain, 

Scarce echoes with my cry. 



Resurgam. 



Year-BooL 33 



iFebruat^ 15. 

. . . The last thing of all which I stopped to look 
at in Lubeck was the best of all, — an old house 
with a turreted bay-window on the corner, and this 
inscription on the front between the first and second 
stories of the house : — 

" North and south, the world is wide : 
East and west, home is best." 

It was a lovely motto for a house, but not a good 
one for wanderers away from home to look at. It 
brought a sudden sense of homesickness, like an 
odor of a flower, or a bar of music, which has an 
indissoluble link with home. 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



iFebmar^ I6. 

. . . God knows best what hearts are counted 
his. . . . 

The Abbot Paphnutius. 



34 The Helen Jackson 

iFfbruar^ 17. 

. . . Words seem always to those who work with 

them more or less failures. 

The Katrina Saga. 



iFebmar^ 18. 

. . . First. If you don't like a thing, try with all 
your might to make it as you do like it. 

Second. If you can't possibly make it as you 
like it, stop thinking about it : let it go. 

Nelly's Silver Mine. 



iFebmaii:^ 19. 

. . . still Nature abhors noise and haste, and 
shams of all sorts. 

Quiet and patience are the great secrets of her 

force, whether it be a mountain or a soul that she 

would fashion. 

Hysteria in Literature. 



Year- Book. 35 



iFebmar^ 20. 

..." Going West ! " Immortal phrase, which 
only the finality of an ocean can stay. 

Hide-and-Seek Town. 



iFebmar^ 21. 

. . . Why has the sage -bush been so despised, so 
held up to the scorn of men ? It is simply a minia- 
ture olive-tree. In tint, in shape, the resemblance is 
wonderful. 

From Chicago to Ogden. 



iFebmar^ 22. 

. . . The sunshine seems to have a color and sub- 
stance to it which I never saw elsewhere, — no, not 
even in Italy. It takes up room ! . . . 

But, in spite of the sunshine ... the very air 
seemed heavy with hidden sadness. 

Salt Lake City. 



36 The Helen Jackson 

iffbmar^ 23. 

... It is impossible to be just to a person or a 

thing disliked. 

From Ogden to San Francisco 



iFebmar^ 24. 

... I dislike the sleeping-car sections more than 
I ever have disliked, ever shall dislike, or ever can 
dislike anything in the world. 

Therefore, I will not describe one. 

Ibid. 



iFebmar^ 25. 

. . . We reached Colfax at noon of midsummer. 
. . . Yellow stages stood ready to carry people over 
smooth, red roads which were to be seen winding off 
in many ways. 

" Grass Valley," " You Bet," and " Little York " 
were three of the names. 

Summer, and slang, and history all beckoning. 

Ibid. 



Year- Book. 37 



iFebrtiar^ 26. 

... We doubled Cape Horn, in the sunny weather, 
as gayly as if we had been on a light-boat's deck ; 
but we were sitting, standing, clinging on the steps 
and platforms of a heavy railroad train, whose track 
bent at a sharp angle around a rocky wall which rose 
up hundreds of feet straight in the air, and reached 
down hundreds of feet into the green valley beneath. 

. . . Whirling around the perilous bend, one had 
only a sense of glee. After-thoughts give it another 
name. 

From Ogden to San Francisco. 



38 The Helen Jackson 



iFrtmar^ 27. 

. . . We wind . . . through great spaces of yel- 
low, waving blossom, — eschscholtzia, yellow lupine, 
and mustard by the acre. It seems as if California's 
hidden gold had grown impatient of darkness, and 

burst up into flower! 

From Ogden to San Francisco. 



iFebmar^ 28. 

. . . Twilight finds us in a labyrinth of low, bare 
hills. . . . Their outlines are indescribably soft and 
gentle. One thinks involuntarily of some of Beetho- 
ven's Adagios. 

The whole grand movement of the vast continent 
seems to have progressed with harmonies and succes- 
sions akin to those of a symphony, and to end now 

with a few low, tender, gracious chords. 

Ibid. 



Year-Book, 39 



ifebtuar^ 29. [Aleap-year" extra."] 

. . . Soul seeks soul, unsatisfied, represt. 
Till in Love's tropic met, they sink to rest, 
At peace forever, in the " Zone of Calms." 

The Zone of Calms. 



a^artf). 



Beneath the sheltering walls the thin snow clings^ 
Dead winter's skeletony left bleaching, white, 
Disjointed, crumbling, on unfriendly fields. 
The inky pools surrender tardily 
At noon, to patient herds ^ a frosty drink 
From jagged rims of ice ; a subtle red 
Of life is kindling every twig and stalk 
Of lowly meadow growths ; the willows wrap 
Their stems in furry white ; the pines grow gray 
A little in the biting wind ; mid-day 
Brings tiny burrowed creatures, peeping out 
Alert for sun. 

Ah, (March ! we know thou art 
Kind-hearted, spite of ugly looks and threats, 
And, out of sight, art nursing April's violets I 



I 



£parcli 1. 

... The things of the earth speak the same words 
to poets under all suns. 

The Convent of San Lazzaro in Venice. 



£parcl& 2. 

... We went into the Coliseum, which . . , 
seemed to be beckoning us with its gray arms. 

You all know just how it looks, I knew that be- 
fore I came ; but how it feels, that is something 
which don't photograph ! — the unspeakable quiet; 
the dance of light and shade in and out of the arches ; 
the distance and the nearness of the Gothic spaces of 
sky, set in settings of stone, and looking like sap- 
phire gates on which, if you had but wings, you 
might knock and find them opening to you! 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



44 The Helen Jackson 



£parcl) 3. 

... As the grand old Russian says, what men 
usually ask for, when they pray to God, is, that two 
and two may not make four. 

Ramona. 



£patct) 4. 

. . . Many things in Nature move us more than 
si:(e ; wonder, even tinged with veneration, is 
shorter-lived than tenderness. 

From Big Oak Flat to Murphy's. 



^arcl) 5. 

. . . Love lifts a great veil from a measureless 
vista : all the rest of life is transformed into one 
shining distance; every present moment is but a 
round in a ladder whose top disappears in the skies, 
from which angels are perpetually descending to the 
dreamer below. 

Mercy Philbrick's Choice. 



Year-Book. 45 



^parcl) 6. 

. . . Somewhere on earth, 

Marked, sealed, mine from its hour of birth, 

A stairway lies, down which I shall descend, 

And pass through a dark gate, which at my name, 

And at no other, will swing back and close. 

Where lies this stairway no man knows, 

No man has even wondered. Only I 

Remember it continually. 

Resurgam. 



^arcli 7. 

. . . Who shall reckon our debt to the pine ? It 
takes such care of us, it must love us, wicked as we 
are. It builds us roofs ; no others keep out sun so 
well. It spreads a finer than Persian mat under our 
feet, provides for us endless music and a balsam of 
healing in the air, ... and at last, in its death, it 
makes our very hearthstones ring with its resonant 
song of cheer and mirth. 

Hide-and-Seek Town. 



46 The Helen Jackson 

^arcl^ 8. 

. . . Albano days; — there are but seven in a 

week. 

That is their only fault. 

Albano Days. 



®arcl) 9. 

. . . Priests in black, looking always like a sort 
of ecclesiastical crow, such silly solemnity in their 
faces, so much slow flap to their petticoats and the 
brims of their hats. 

— ♦— Ibid. 

^arcl) 10. 

. . . American women, — to be known from all 
the rest by their quick peering faces, and their being 
sure to get in everywhere. 

The Returned Veterans' Fest in Salzburg. 



-♦— 



^arc^i IL 

. , . Even from divinest music one must rest. 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



Year-BooL 47 



^arct) 12. 

O helpless body of hickory tree, 
What do I burn, in burning thee ? 
Summers of sun, winters of snow, 
Springs full of sap's resistless flow ; 
All past year's joys of garnered fruits ; 
All this year's purposed buds and shoots ; 
Secrets of fields of upper air, 
Secrets which stars and planets share ; 
Light of such smiles as broad skies fling ; 
Sound of such tunes as wild winds sing ; 
Voices which told where gay birds dwelt, 
Voices which told where lovers knelt ; — 
O strong white body of hickory tree. 
How dare I burn all these, in thee ? 



My Hickory Fire. 



48 Tbe Helen Jackson 

^arcl) 13. 

. . . There are spaces wider than lands can meas- 
ure, or the seas fill. 

From Ogden to San Francisco. 



®arcl) 14. 

. . . Everything in this world is relative, and 
nothing more so than the significance of the same 
word in different localities. 



Dandy Steve. 



^arc^i 15. 

. . . Olives, gray and solemn, . . . most pathetic 
of trees. The first man who saw an olive-tree must 
have known that there had been Gethsemane. 

Never else could such pathos have been put into 

mere color; they could never have been so gray 

before that night. 

Albano Days. 



Year-Book. 49 



^arclj 16. 

. . . What an interesting addition it would be to 
the statistics of foods eaten by diflferent peoples, to 
collect the statistics of the different foods with which 
pride* s hunger is satisfied in different countries ! Its 
stomach has as many and opposite standards as the 
human digestive apparatus. 

It is, like everything else, all and only a question 

of climate. 

A Burns Pilgrimage. 

— ♦— 

^arc^i 17. 

. . . This poor, paltry life 
Of flesh, which is so little worth its cost, 
Which eager sows, but may not stay to reap. 
And so soon breathless with the strain and strife, 
Its work half-done, exhausted, falls asleep. 

Mercy Philbrick's Choice. 



■^ 



50 The Helen Jackson 



^arcl) 18. 

. . . Paris is just what I thought it was, — New 
York grown up, graduated, and with a diploma ! 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



^arcj) 19. 

..." Yellow Tiber " sounds well ; Macaulay 
never could have got on without that adjective; 
but it is such a license, no poet any nearer than 
England would have ventured on it. 

The water looks just like the water in the puddles 
in brickyards, dirty, thick, dead, drab; as for 
" shaking its tawny mane," it does not look as if 
it ever stirred so much as a drop. 

Ibid. 



Year-Book. 51 



^arcf) 20. 

. . . With some parents, although they are neither 
harsh nor hard in manner, nor yet unloving in nature, 
the habitual first impulse seems to be to refuse : they 
appear to have a singular obtuseness to the fact that 
it is, or can be, of any consequence to a child whether 
it does or does not do the thing it desires. 

The Inhumanities of Parents. 



^arcl) 21. 

. . . The sea is the loneliest of things in the uni- 
verse, I think. The fields and the woods and the 
hills all look as if they had good fellowship with 
each other perpetually; but the great, blank, bare sea, 

looks forever alone. 

Hetty's Strange History. 



52 The Helen Jackson 

sparcl) 22. 

. . . Ah, are there elsewhere in the world such 
colors as the cherry scarlet, gray blue, pomegranate 
red, and deep sea green which Austrian officers wear ? 

And then the fit of them ! It is profane to suppose 
they are cut and made. 

It is the coats that come first; and the men are 
melted over night and poured in in the morning. 

The Returned Veterans' Fest in Salzburg. 



£parct) 23. 

... It makes little difference . . . where one opens 
the record of the history of the Indians ; every page 
and every year has its dark stain. 

A Century of Dishonor. 



£parcti 24. 

. . . Rome is a siren of sirens. 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



Year- Book. 53 



£parcl) 25. 

O Truth, art thou relentless ? Wilt thou rest 

Never ? From solitude to solitude 

Eternally wilt thou escape ? . . . 

From force to force, through rock, through sound, 

through flame, 

Our worship wrests but echo of thy name, 

And builds at last, with patient stone, and sod. 

And tears, its altar " to the unknown God." 

Truth. 



£parct) 26. 

. . . Titian's single heads and single figures are . . . 
sonnets, either solemn and slow, with the whole of the 
man's life concentrated into that day's voice, or vivid 
fiery, like the passionate outpouring of one moment ! 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



54 The Helen Jackson 



^arcl) 27. 

. . . What unconscious tribute we pay to the doc- 
trine of the resurrection by the love and honor in 
which we hold graves, century after century ! 

An Afternoon in Memoriam, in Salzburg. 



^parcl) 28. 

. . . Bodies are frail things ; there are more child - 
martyrs than will be known until the bodies terres- 
trial are done with. 



Breaking the Will. 



^parcl) 29. 

. . . The man who is ready to give pledge that 

the opinion he will hold to-morrow will be precisely 

the opinion he holds to-day has either thought very 

little, or to little purpose, or has resolved to quit 

thinking altogether. 

Margin 



Year-Book. , 55 



^arcl) 30. 

. . . When God's next sweet world we reach, 
And the poor words we stammered here 
Are fast forgot, while angels teach 
Us spirit language quick and clear, 
Perhaps some words of earthly speech 
We still shall speak, and still hold dear. 

This Summer. 



^arcb 31. 

. . . stretches of stone wall . . . have a dignity 
and significance which no other expedient for boun- 
dary-marking has attained. They make of each farm 
a little walled principality, of each field an approach 
to a fortress ; and if one thinks of the patience which 
it must need to build them by the mile, they seem at 
once to take a place among enduring records or race 

memorials. 

Hide-and-Seek Town. 



f 'i!^ 




i \ll\iU 



Sllpril. 



Robins call robins in tops of trees ; 

Doves follow doves, with scarlet feet ; 
Frolicking babies, sweeter than these. 

Crowd green corners where highways meet. 

Golden and snowy and red the flowers. 
Golden, snowy, and red in vain ; 

Robins call robins through sad showers ; 
The white dove's feet are wet with rain. 

For April sobs while these are so glad, 
April weeps while these are so gay, — 

Weeps like a tired child who had. 
Playing with flowers, lost its way. 



april 1. 

. . . Even destiny itself winces a little before a 
certain sort and amount of determination. 

The Valley of Gastein. 



SLptil 2. 

. . . Things that we think very much about we 
never forget, any more than we do persons that we 
love very dearly . . . 

So ^^ I forgot " is not very much of an excuse for 

not having done a thing ; it is only another way of 

saying, " I did n't attend to it enough to make it stay 

in my mind," or, " I did n't care enough about it to 

remember it." 

Cat Stories. 

april 3. * 

. . . Country people always seem to have more 
than the usual allowance of elbow. . . 

The Returned Veterans' Fest in Salzburg. 



m 



60 Tbe Helen Jackson 



april 4. 

. . . Nowise 
Escaping and nowise forgetting one 
Of all the actions done, — 

And bearing all that lies 
In utmost law for me, — all God's great will, 
All God's great mercy, — still 

I shall arise. 

The fool asks, *' With what flesh ? in joy or pain ? 
Helped or unhelped ? and lonely, or again 

Surrounded by our earthly friends ? " 
I know not ; and I glory that I do 
Not know : that for Eternity's great ends 
God counted me as worthy of such trust 
That I need not be told. 

• • • • • 

I love and fear not ; and I cannot lose. 

One instant, this great certainty of peace. 

Long as God ceases not, I cannot cease ; 

I must arise. 

Resurgam. 



Year- Book. 61 



april 5. 

. . . We found an American family at dinner in 
the cabin, as if tliey had lived there all their lives,— 
a thin, yellow mamma, with tight hair, which sa- 
vored of sewing societies and rigid principles ; a papa 
who was all gray, grizzled good nature ; and a miss 
who did French for them both ; and they had been 
on the Nile all winter, and were just from Corfu; 
and were in Madeira the winter before; and, dear 
me, for all that, how very inexperienced and unin- 
formed they looked ! 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



aipril 6. 

. . . Lilacs made 
A green and purple tent with pleasant shade. 

First Voyage Round the World. 



m 



62 The Helen Jackson 



april 7. 

. . . The first Colorado flower I saw was the great 
blue wind-flower, or anemone. It was brought to 
me one morning, late in April, when snow was lying 
on the ground . . . The flower was only half open, 
and only half way out of a gray, furry sheath some 
two inches long ... the daintiest, most wrapped -up 
little blossom. 

"A crocus, out in chinchilla fur ! " I exclaimed. 

" Not a crocus at all ; an anemone," said they who 

knew. 

The Procession of Flowers. 



Year-Book. 63 



april 8. 

. . . Somebody said ... the other day, that a 
pilgrimage over the pavements of Rome without peas 
in your shoes was quite enough to atone for most 
sins. Sometimes I think one hour of it has cleared 
my scot ! 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



aprtl 9. 

... I am hankering after a hill country with only 
its own legitimate dead about ! 

Not that I mean to reflect on the family records of 
the Caesars and Antonines; but I think it chokes the 
air a little too much to dig down into so many layers 
of sepulchre. 

Sufficient unto a century is the dead thereof. 

Ibid. 



64 The Helen Jackson 



april 10. 

. . . Our people are living, on the whole, the dull- 
est lives that are lived in the world, by the so-called 
civilized ; and the climax of this dullness of life is to 
be found in ... a small New England town. 

Mercy Philbrick's Choice. 



april 11. 

. . . Agati{ed men and women. . . . They last 

well, such people, — as well, almost, as agatized wood 

on museum shelves ; and the most you can do for 

them is to keep them well dusted. 

Ibid. 



aprtl 12. 

... To be waked up out of sleep has always 
seemed to me a crowning insult and outrage to 
Nature. 



Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



Year-Book. 65 



april 13. 

When night falls on the earth, the sky 
Looks like a wide, a boundless main. 

Who knows what voyagers sail there ? 
Who names the ports they seek and gain > 

Are not the stars like beacons set 

To guide the argosies that go 
From universe to universe. 

Our little world above, below ? 
• • • • • 

O thought too vast ! O thought too glad ! 

An awe most rapturous it stirs. 
From world to world God's beacons shine : 

God means to save his mariners ! 

God's Lighthouses. 



66 The Helen Jackson 



april 14. 

... On every road each man we meet is a pris- 
oner ; he is dying at heart, however sound he looks ; 
he is only waiting, however well he works. 

If we stop to ask whether he be our brother, he 
is gone. 

Our one smile would have lit up his prison-day. 

Alas for us if we smiled not as we passed by ! 

Friends of the Prisoners. 



april 15. 

... No one can estimate the results on a charac- 
ter of the slow absorptions, the unconscious biases, 
from daily contact. All precepts, all religions, are in- 
significant agencies by their side. 

Hetty's Strange History. 



Year-Book, 67 



0pril 16. 

... As for the sirocco, when that blows, all hope 
forsakes a person of nerves ; you feel as if you were 
a thousand needles, assorted sizes ! 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



3ipril 17. 

, . . Birds, with motion more serene 
Than stillest rest. . . . 

My House not Made with Hands. 



0pnl 18. 

... In spite of all which satirical writers have 
said and say of the loquacious egotism, the question- 
ing curiosity of our people, it is true to-day that the 
average American is a reticent, taciturn, speechless 
creature, who, for his own sake, and still more for 
the sake of all who love him, needs, more than he 
needs anything else under heaven, to learn to speak. 

Learning to Speak. 



68 The Helen Jackson 



j^pril 19. 

. . . Hens are the forlornest of all created animals 
when it rains. Who can help laughing at sight of a 
flock of them huddled up under lee of a bam, limp, 
draggled, spiritless, shifting from one leg to the other, 
with their silly heads hanging inert to right or left, 
looking as if they would die for want of a yawn ? 

One sees just such groups of other two-legged 
creatures in parlors, under similar circumstances. 

Rainy Days. 



0pril 20. 

. . . That man is to be pitied who lives his life 
out under the impression that it is within his own 
guidance. 



Hetty's Strange History. 



Year-Book, 69 



0jprtl 2L 

DEDICATION. 

I saw men kneeling where their hands had brought 
And fashioned curiously a pile of stone. 
To God they said they gave it, for his own, 
And that their psalms and prayers had wrought 
Its consecration. When, perplexed, I sought 
Their meaning, they but answered with a groan, 
And called my question blasphemy. Alone, 
In silence of the wilderness, I thought 
Again. 

Swift answer came from rock, tree, sod : 
" These puny prayers superfluous rise, and late 
These psalms. 

When first the world swung out in space, 
Amid the shoutings of the sons of God, 
Then was its every atom dedicate, 
Forever holy by God's gift and grace." 



70 The Helen Jackson 



aprtl 22. 

... Ah, my people, don't believe one word you 
hear written or said against " lodgings *' ! It is the 
ideal way of living, and England is the country of 
comfort. 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



0prtl 23 

. . . Dens of high-priced misery called boarding- 
houses . . . 

Ibid. 
— • — 

april 24. 

... A fried chop on a cold plate, — that perpet- 
ual insult, that unchristian outrage, which pursues 
the traveler in New England, from Monday morning 
till Saturday night, — it would make an English 
landlord stand still in wonder to see. 

Ibid 



Year- Book. 71 



april 25. 

. . . The people of the United States have never 
in the least realized that the taking possession of Cal- 
ifornia was not only a conquering of Mexico, but a 
conquering of California as well ; that the real bitter- 
ness of the surrender was not so much to the empire 
which gave up the country, as to the country itself 

which was given up. 

Ramona. 



aijpnl 26. 

. . . " It 's always seemed to me that men was the 
obstinatest critters made, even the best on 'em." 

Nelly's Silver Mine. 



april 27. 

. . . There is n't any place left for godliness next 

to cleanliness in Rotterdam, I am sure; cleanliness 

has taken all the room ! 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



72 Year-Book. 



aipril 28. 

. . . There can be a heart and a significant record 
in the face of a plain and a mountain, as much as in 
the face of a man. 

Colorado Springs. 



aipril 29. 

. . . Ah, she is only half mother who does not 
see her own child in every child ! — her own child's 
grief in every pain which makes another child 
weep! 

Half an Hour in a Railway Station. 



0pril 30. 

. . . There is no proverb which strikes a truer bal- 
ance between two things than the old one which 
weighs example over against precept. 

The Inhumanities of Parents. 




A\ay 




'^mi 



'tW 






'7j { 




2t?ap* 



. The voice of one who goes before to make 
The paths of June more beautiful, is thine. 
Sweet zMay ! Without an envy of her crown 
And bridal ; patient stringing emeralds 
And shining rubies for the brows of birch 
And maple ; flinging garlands of pure white 
And pink, which to their bloom add prophecy ; 
Gold cups o'er-filling on a thousand hills 
And calling honey-bees ; out of their sleep 
The tiny summer harpers with bright wings 
Awaking, teaching them their notes for noon ; - 
O zMay, sweet-voiced one, going thus before. 
Forever June may pour her warm red wine 
Of life and passion, — sweeter days are thine I 



flpa^ 1. 

... What brutish people we are, even those of us 
who think we love Nature well, to live our lives out 
so ignorant of her good old families ! . . . 

. . . We are not ashamed to spend summer after 

summer face to face with flowers and trees and 

stones, and never so much as know them by name. 

I wonder they treat us so well as they do, provide 

us with food and beauty so often, poison us so 

seldom. It must be only out of the pity they feel, 

being diviner than we. 

A May-Day in Albano, 



^a^ 2. 

. . . The thing that shall be is the thing for which 
all the powers of Nature are at work. 

Mercy Philbrick's Choice. 



76 The Helen Jackson 



£pa^ 3. 

... I never find myself forming part of a don- 
key, with a donkey man in rear, without being re- 
minded of all the pictures I have seen of the " Flight 
into Egypt," and being impressed anew with a sense 
of the terrible time that Holy Family must have had 
trying to make haste on such kind of animal : of all 
beasts, to escape from a hostile monarch on ! 

And one never pities Joseph any more for having 
to go on foot; except for the name of the thing, 
walking must always be easier. 

A May-Day in Albano. 



^a^ 4. 

. . . Nature's retributions, like her rewards, are 
cumulative. 



The Inhumanities of Parents. 



Year-Book, "j^j 



£pa^ 5. 



Somewhere thou awaitest, 
And I, with lips unkissed, 
Weep that thus to latest 
Thou puttest off our tryst ! 

• • * 

Others who would fly thee 
In cowardly alarms, 
Who hate thee and deny thee, 
Thou f oldest in thine arms ! 

How shall I entreat thee 
No longer to withhold ? 
I dare not go to meet thee, 
O lover, far and cold ! 

O lover, whose lips chilling 
So many lips have kissed, 
Come, even if unwilling. 
And keep thy solemn tryst ! 



Tryst. 



78 The Helen Jackson 



^a^ 6. 

... As for the Doge's palace, that's another 
blow! It may be imposing ; I suppose Ruskin knows; 
but somehow it won't impose on me, and I can't get 

it to! 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



^a^ 7. 

. . . Every day I see me n in the Academy sitting 
down calmly to copy Titian's red 1 and I wonder at 
their being suffered to go about without keepers. 

Ibid. 



^a^ 8. 

... No woman, whatever she may say and hon- 
estly mean, can entirely dismiss from her thoughts 
the memory of the words in which a man has told 
her he loves her. 

Hetty's Strange History. 



Year-Book, 79 

#a^ 9. 

. . . Tyranny and fanaticism work with the same 
tools, and write the same handwriting, all the world 
over. 

Salt Lake City. 

— ♦— 

#a^ 10. 

. . . Cyclamens, — ** mad violets "the Italians call 
them, and there is a pertinence in the name ; they 
hang their heads and look down as if no violet could 
be more shy, but all the while their petals turn back 
like the ears of a vicious horse, and their whole 
expression is of the most fascinating mixture of 
modesty and mischief. 

A May-Day in Albano. 



£pa^ u. 

. . . Yesterday we went to a Scotch Presbyterian 
meeting in a little room on the Grand Canal. Think 
of the antithesis of the thing ! 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



8o The Helen Jackson 



£pa^ 12. 

. . . There are two picture sin the Academy by 
a Martino da Udine, a rare man . . . who has left 
only a few things. One of these is the Angel of the 
Annunciation ; the other is a Madonna, — both single 
figures, severe, alone, no accessories, but an air of 
heaven about the one, and of sanctified earth in the 
other, which it is good to see. 

I know lines in George Herbert — written, is it one 

hundred or more years later ? — which are like these 

pictures. 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



^ai^ 13. 

. . . Teach us who waits best sues ; 
Who longest waits of all most surely wins. 
When Time is spent, Eternity begins. 
To doubt, to chafe, to haste, doth God accuse. 

The Victory of Patience. 



Year- Book. 81 



£pa^ 14. 

. . . Orchids,— looking, as orchids always do, like 
imprisoned spirits just about to escape. 

A May-Day in Albano. 



^a^ 15. 

. . . The man who shuts himself apart from his 
fellows, above all, the man who thus shuts himself 
apart because he thinks of his fellows with pitying 
condescension as his inferiors, is a fool and a blas- 
phemer,— a fool because he robs himself of that 
good-fellowship which is the leaven of life ; a blas- 
phemer, because he virtually implies that God made 
men unfit for him to associate with. 

Mercy Philbrick's Choice. 



^a^ 16. 

. . . Miles of hushed pines are as solemn as 
eternity. 



Hide-and-Seek Town. 



82 



The Helen Jackson 



£pa^ 17. 

. . . Very few fathers and mothers, even those 
who are fluent, perhaps, in society, habitually talk 
with their children. 

Learning to Speak. 



£pa^ 18. 

. . . Never to appear as a factor in the situation ; 
to be able to wield other men, as instruments, with 
the same direct and implicit response to will that one 
gets from a hand or a foot, — this is to triumph in- 
deed: to be as nearly controller and conqueror of 
Fates as fate permits. 

Ramona. 



£Pa^ 19. 

. . . Love cannot lose nor leave his way, 
Comes not too soon, comes not too late. 



Belated. 



Year- Book, 83 



£pa^ 20. 

. . . One day, in the Protestant cemetery in Rome, 

I found a grave without a stone to mark it, and white 

violets growing above. I am not sure that the white 

violet 1 brought away from that grave has not a 

voice sweeter than that from the grave of Shelley. 

Who can tell why ? 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



£pa^ 21. 

... To be out in the rain in Venice is too much 
to be borne by the stoutest soul. To be between two 
fires is always accounted a bad thing in battle ; but to 
be between two waters is as bad. 

Ibid. 



^a^ 22. 

. . . Cure for freedom's harms is freedom still. 

Freedom. 



84 The Helen Jackson 



£pa^ 23. 

. . . The average woman, when she is in the com- 
pany of even a single person, seems to consider her- 
self derelict in duty if conversation is not what she 
calls '^kept up,'' — an instinctive phrase, which, by its 
universal use, is the bitterest comment on its own 
significance. 

Men have no such feeling. Two men will sit by 

each other's side, it may be for hours, in silence, and 

feel no derogation from good comradeship. Why 

should not women > 

Hetty's Strange History. 



^a^ 24. 

. . . Sufficient unto the day is the beauty thereof 
in Colorado. One does not remember nor anticipate 
the beauties of yesterday or to-morrow. 

A Colorado Week. 



Year-Book. 85 



£pa^ 25. 

. . . One dies daily of shame at one's own igno- 
rance. 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



©a^ 26. 

... To come away from the Grand Canal in 
Venice when Venetian men are singing on the water 
is not in the power of human beings. 

The Ten Commandments can be kept perhaps; 
people are said to have done it ; but this is harder. 

Ibid. 



£pa^ 27. 

. . . After all, Venice is a ghost. 



Ibid. 



£pai? 28. 

. . . Why do we malign the so-called brute crea- 
tion, making their names a unit of comparison for 
base traits which never one of them possessed } 

Ramona. 



86 



The Helen Jackson 



^a^ 29. 

. . . The silence, the sense of space in these Rocky 
Mountain solitudes cannot be expressed ; neither can 
the peculiar atmospheric beauty be described . . . 
The shapes are the shapes of the north, but the air 
is like the air of the tropics, — shimmering, kindling. 
No pictures of the Rocky Mountains which I have 
seen have caught it in the least. There is not a cold 
tint here. No dome of Constantinople or Venice, 
no pyramid of Egypt, ever glowed and swam in 
warmer light and of warmer hue than do these 
colossal mountains. 

Some mysterious secret of summer underlies and 

outshines their perpetual snows. 

A Colorado Week. 



Year-BooL 87 



£pa)^ 30. 

DECORATION DAY. 

But, ah ! the graves which no man names or knows ; 
Uncounted graves, which never can be found ; 
Graves of the precious ** missing," where no sound 
Of tender weeping will be heard, where goes 
No loving step of kindred. O, how flows 
And yearns our thought to them ! More holy ground 
Of graves than this, we say, is that whose bound 
Is secret till eternity disclose 
Its sign. 

But Nature knows her wilderness ; 
There are no ** missing " in her numbered ways. 
In her great heart is no forgetfulness. 
Each grave she keeps she will adorn, caress. 
We cannot lay such wreaths as Summer lays, 
And all her days are Decoration Days ! 



' Vi 



88 Year-Book. 



£pa^ 3L 

. . . Who will lift up her voice, or his, and write, 
write, write, in all newspapers, till we have better 
things to eat ? 

Now slavery is no more, we might be free from 

dyspepsia ! 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



S^unc* 



. . . y alleys all alive with happy sound ; 

The song of birds ; swift brooks' delicious flow ; 

The mystic hum of million things that grow ; 

The stir of men ; and, gladdening every way, 

Voices of little children at their play ; 

And shining banks of flowers which words refuse 

To paint . . . 

In the Pass. 



3Iune 1. 

. . . Faith — the best Elixir of Life yet dis- 
An Afternoon in Memoriam, in Salsburg. 



covered. 



3Iune 2. — ^— 

. . . Legs and languages ! Let nobody expect to 
be happy in Europe without two very strong speci- 
mens of the one, and at least four of the other. 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 

3Iune 3. — ♦— 

. . . Most sacred and inalienable of all rights is the 
right of helplessness to protection from the strong, 
of ignorance to counsel from the wise. 

The Inhumanities of Parents. 

3f|ttne 4. — >— 

... A child ought never to be reproved in the 
presence of others. Ibid. 



92 The Helen Jackson 



3(|une 5. 

. . . Going so slowly, you will have great reward 
in . . . getting into fellowship with the lizards. 

. . . The other day, on the road to Marino, I made 
acquaintance with two lizards, who were finer than 
Solomon in all his glory, and had a villa with a bet- 
ter view than the Barberini. 

Albano Days. 



3(Ittne 6. 

... No wonder that Theodore Parker, when he 
saw a stone-pine, asked that one be set on his grave. 
No tree grows which has such bearing of a solemn 
purpose. 

Ibid. 



31une 7. 

... O the cruel lure of a flower you cannot 
possibly touch ! 



Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



Year-Book, 93 



3|une 8. 

In ecstasy, part joy, part pain, 
Where fear and wonder half restrain 
Love's gratitude, I lay my ear 
Close to the ground, and listening hear 
This noiseless, ceaseless, boundless tide 
Of earth's great wealth, on every side. 
Rolling and pouring up to break 
At feet of God, who will not take 
Nor keep among his heavenly things 
So much as tithe of all it brings ; 
But instant turns the costly wave. 
Gives back to earth all that it gave. 
Spends all his universe of power 
And pomp to deck one single hour 
Of time, and then in largess free. 
Unasked, bestows the hour on me. 

Revenues. 



94 The Helen Jackson 



3Iune 9. 

. . . Israelites, coolies, and negroes, — all they have 
died of misfortunes ; but the donkey is the Wander- 
ing Jew of misery among animals, and Italy, I think, 

must be his Ghetto. 

Albano Days. 



3(lune 10. 

. . . There is the ready truth, the living voice, the 
warm hand, or the final experience, waiting for each 
soul's need. We do not die till we have found them. 

Mercy Philbrick's Choice. 



3(Iune iL 

..." Yes," said my friend, reflectively ; " she is 
not a brilliant woman ; she is not even an intellectual 
one ; but there is such a thing as a genius for affec- 
tion, and she has it." 

A Genius for Affection. 



Year-Book. 95 

3f|une 12. 

. . . Who watcheth clouds will have no time 
to reap. 

Chance. 

—4 — 



3Iune 13. 

... We prate in our shallow wisdom about 
causes, but the most that we can trace is a short 
line of incidental occasions. 

Hetty's Strange History. 



Iflttite 14. 

... He who journeys in a foreign country whose 
language he does not know is in a sorrier plight for 
the time being than one born a deaf-mute. 

... It is ceaseless humiliation added to perpetual 
discomfort. And the more novel the country, and 
the greater his eagerness to understand all he sees, 
the greater is his misery. 

Four Days with Sanna. 



96 The Helen Jackson 



31une 15. 

In the lowly basement, 

Rocking in the sun, the baby's cradle stands ; 

Now the little one thrusts out his rosy hands ; 

Soon his eyes will open ; then in all the lands 

No such morning-glory ! 

Morning Glory. 



31une 16. 

There are nine " places of divine worship " 
in Colorado Springs, — the Presbyterian, the Cum- 
berland Presbyterian, the Methodist, the South Meth- 
odist, the Episcopal, the Congregationalist, the 
Baptist, the Unitarian, and Cheyenne Canyon. 

Cheyenne Canyon is three miles out of town; 
but the members of its congregation find this no 

objection. 

Sittings are free in the cathedral of Cheyenne 

Canyon. Cheyenne Canyon. 



Year-BooL 97 



3lune 17. 

... It would be safe to say that there cannot be 
found in the animal kingdom a bat, or any other 
creature, so blind in its own range of circumstance 
and connection, as the great majority of human 
beings are in the bosoms of their families. 

Tempers strain and recover, hearts break and heal, 

strength falters, fails, and comes near to giving way 

altogether, every day, without being noted by the 

closest lookers-on. 

Ramon A. 



3|une 18. 

. . . Man born of man knows nothing when he 

goes; 
The winds blow where they list, and will disclose 
To no man which brings safety, which brings risk. 

Danger. 



98 The Helen Jackson 



3une 19. 

O my mountains, no wisdom can teach 

Me to think that ye care 
Nothing more for my steps than the rest, 

Or that they can have share 
Such as mine in your royal crown-lands, 

Unencumbered of fee ; 
In your temples with altars unhewn, 

Where redemption is free ; 
In your houses of treasure, which gold 

Cannot buy if it seek ; 
And your oracles, mystic with words, 

Which men lose if they speak ! 

Return to the Hills. 



Year-Book, 99 



3|une 20. 

Ah ! with boldness of lovers who wed 

I make haste to your feet, 
And as constant as lovers who die, 

My surrender repeat ; 
And I take as the right of my love. 

And I keep as its sign, 
An ineflF able joy in each sense, 

And new strength as from wine, 
A seal for all purpose and hope. 

And a pledge of full light. 
Like a pillar of cloud for my day, 

And of fire for my night. 

Return to the Hills. 



loo The Helen Jackson 



31une 21. 

. . . The plain is a plain — bare, apparent, monot- 
onous, wearying, hot ; and the mountains — God be 
praised for them forever — are reticent, unfathom- 
able, eternally varied, restful, cool. So long as the 
world stands shall the instinct of men turn to them 
for the best strengths of soul and body. 

Central City and Bob Tail Tunnel. 



3|une 22. 

. . . Flowers were always dear to the Franciscans. 
Saint Francis himself permitted all decorations which 
could be made of flowers. 

He classed them with his brothers and sisters, the 

sun, moon, and stars, — all members of the sacred 

choir praising God. 

Ramona. 



Year-Book, loi 



3(|une 23. 

. . . Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof is 
but one side of the truth. No day is sufficient unto 
the evil thereof is the other. 

Wanted. — A Home. 

Iflune 24. * 

. . . Each day has to bear burdens passed down 
from so many other days; each person has to bear 
burdens so complicated, so interwoven with the bur- 
dens of others ; each person's fault is so fevered and 
swollen by faults of others, that there is no disen- 
tangling the question of responsibility. 

Ibid. 



3f|une 25. * 

. . . Everything is everybody's fault is the sim- 
plest and fairest way of putting it. 

Ibid. 



I02 The Helen Jackson 



31une 26. 

... It is everybody's fault that the average home 
is stupid, dreary, insufferable, — a place from which 
fathers fly to clubs, boys and girls to streets. 

Wanted. — A Home. 



idune 27. 

... But when we ask who can do most to remedy 
this, . . . then the answer is clear and loud. 

It is the work of women. To create and sustain 
the atmosphere of a home, — it is easily said in a 
very few words ; but how many women have done it } 

Ibid. 



^nm 28. 

. . . Sunrise has no worshippers, and all men 
worship the Sunset. 



Hide-and-Seek Town. 



Year- Book. 103 



^nm 29. 

... At day dawn plant thy seed, and be not slow 
At night. God doth not slumber take nor sleep : 
Which seed shall prosper thou canst never know. 

Chance. 



3(Iune 30. 

. . . Surliness of heart must melt a little under the 
simple effort to smile. A man will inevitably be a 
little less of a bear for trying to wear the face of a 
Christian. 

The Joyless American. 

... It is the heart and the spirit and the expres- 
sion that we bring to our work, and not those that 
we bring to our play, by which our real vitality 
must be tested and by which our faces will be 
stamped. 

Ibid. 



fulp. 



. . . The shimmering heat, 
A tropic tide of air with ehb and flow. 
Bathes all the fields of wheat until they glow 
Like flashing seas of green . . . 

Poppies on the Wheat, 



i 



3ul^ 1. 

. . . Grumblers are the only thing in this world 
that it is right to grumble at. 



The Descendants of Nabal. 



3nul^ 2. --^ 

. . . The most perfect sentence ever written bears 

to the thing it meant to say the relation which the 

chemist's formula does to the thing he handles, names, 

analyzes, can destroy, perhaps, but cannot make. 

A Genius for Affection. 



31ul^ 3. 



This morning's sunrise does not show to me 
Seed-film or fruit of my sweet yesterday ; 
Like falling flowers, to realms I cannot see 
Its moments floated silently away : 
No answer stirs the shining air, 
Aslask,"«^/;^r^.?" 



Where ? 



io8 The Helen Jackson 



illull? 4. 

. . . The testimony of some of the highest mili- 
tary officers of the United States is on record to the 
effect that, in our Indian wars, almost without excep- 
tion, the first aggressions have been made by the 
white man ; and the assertion is supported by every 
civilian of reputation who has studied the subject. 

A Century of Dishonor. 



31ul^ 5. 

..." How can it be God's will that wrong be 

done ? . . . But how can it happen, if it is not 

God's will? ..." 

Ramona. 

3|ttl^ 6. 

. . . Love can be crueller than any friendship, 
than any indifference, than any hate : nothing is so 
exacting, so inexorable, as love. 

Mercy Philbrick's Choice. 



Year- Book. 109 



3ul^ 7. 

... I thought I had tasted of bad things in Italy, 
but I give Germany the unquestioned palm. 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



31uli? 8. 

... I am anxious to know whether the great 
students and thinkers of Germany eat the same sorts 
of food which I have seen in Berchtesgaden and 
Gastein. 

If they do, it is plain that for the German nation 
has been made by the Creator some peculiar and 
especial provision by which brains are independent of 
stomachs. 

Ibid. 



3Iul^ 9. 

. . . Nothing in nature is so powerful in associa- 
tion as a perfume. 



Hetty's Strange History. 



no 



The Helen Jackson 



aul^ 10. 

Blindfolded and alone I stand 

With unknown thresholds on each hand ; 

The darkness deepens as I grope, 

Afraid to fear, afraid to hope : 

Yet this one thing I learn to know 

Each day more surely as I go, 

That doors are opened, ways are made, 

Burdens are lifted or are laid, 

By some great law unseen and still, 

Unfathomed purpose to fulfil, 

'' Not as I will." 

"Not as I Will." 



... Oh! the sweet reasonableness of children 
when disagreeable necessities are explained to them, 
instead of being enforced as arbitrary tyrannies ! 

Wet the Clay. 



Year-Book. 1 1 1 



Jul^ 12. 

. . . We owe a great debt to Mr. Whistler for 
having reclaimed the good word " symphony " from 
the arbitrary monopoly of music writers. 

. . . Henceforth they who make harmonies for 
the eye will hold the word fraternally in common 
with those who make harmonies for the ear, and no 
just person can call it an affectation. 

A Symphony in Yellow and Red. 



3lul^ 13. 

... He also who seeks to render in words, as 
others in music or color, some one of nature's 
gracious harmonies which has greatly delighted him, 
will do it all the better by the help of this good word 

in the beginning. 

Ibid. 

— • — 

3lul^ 14. 

... Colorado is a symphony in yellow and red. 

Ibid. 



1 1 2 The Helen Jackson 



iflul^ 15. 

. . . Inexorable seasons, surer than any other seed- 
time and harvest, are those uncalendared seasons in 
which souls sow and reap with meek patience. 

Hetty's Strange History. 



31ul^ 16. 

. . . The happiness begun 
In happiness, of happiness may cloy, 
And, its own subtle foe, itself destroy. 
But steadfast, tireless, quenchless as the sun 
Doth grow that gladness which hath root in pain. 

Ibid. 



iflul^ 17. 

. . . Ah, the reward of ugly, hard climbs in this 

world ! 

Mentally, morally, physically, what is worth so 

much as outlooks from high places } 

Cheyenne Canyon. 



Year- Book, 113 

3ul^ 18. 

... Ah, they know not heart 
Of man or woman, who declare 
That love needs time to love and dare. 
His altars wait, — not day nor name, 
Only the touch of sacred flame. 

The Story of Boon. 

3(|til^ 19. ""*~ 

. . . People who see clearly themselves are almost 
always intolerant of those who do not. 

Mercy Philbrick's Choice. 



-• — 



3(lul^ 20. 

^ . , Any thing which makes the joyless, taciturn 
American speak to his fellow whom he does not 
know, is for the time being a blessing. 

Half an Hour in a Railway Station. 



114 



The Helen Jackson 



3ul^ 21. 

. . . Those of you who have seen the Cathedral 
of Cologne will not wonder that I have nothing to 
say about it ; those of you who have not must for- 
give me. 

I cannot say one word. It is more wonderful 
than any words. 

If I said that by miracle a stone mountain had 

flowered in spire and arch and statue till there was 

not room for one single flower more to be set, 

that is my nearest word to what I saw, and so near 

that I think that somebody else must have said it 

before me. 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 

. . . Really, angry German is the most horrible 
sound I ever heard in my life. Incantation, male- 
dictions, supernatural fhunderings, and sputterings 

are in it. 

Ibid. 



Year-Book, 1 1 5 



3|ul^ 22. 

. . . Human nature has not yd shed all the 
monkey ... 

The Old-Clothes Monger in Journalism. 



3Iul^ 23. 

. . . Because one has a goal, must one be torn by 
poisoned spurs ? 

We see on the Corso, in the days of the Carnival, 
what speed can be made by horses under torture. 

Shall we try those methods and that pace on our 
journeys } 

The Joyless American. 

— < — 

aul^ 24. 

... So long as the American is resolved to do in 
one day the work of two, ... to earn before he is 
forty the reputation which belongs to threescore and 
ten, so long he will go about the streets wearing his 
present abject, pitiable, overwrought, joyless look. 

Ibid. 



ii6 



The Helen Jackson 



3Iul^ 25. 

. . . After looking up at . . . bald granite domes 
four and five thousand feet high, after following the 
line of overlapping arches and columns and peaks of 
stone, high up in the air on either hand as far as you 
can see, seeming to tower and grow, and threaten to 
topple under your very gaze, — there is a sense of 
protection in the neighborhood of an azalea, a new 
comradeship with a daisy. They have summered 
and wintered in Ah-wah-ne, and are not afraid. 

Pl-WY-ACK AND YO-WI-HE. 



3ul^ 26. 

. . . What a useless routine, for one left alone, to 
be fed, to sleep, and to rise up to eat and sleep again ! 

Mercy Philb rick's Choice. 



Year-Book, 



117 



3IUl)? 27. 

ARIADNE'S FAREWELL. 

The daughter of a king, how should I know 
That there were tinsels wearing face of gold, 
And worthless glass, which in the sunlight's hold 
Could shameless answer back my diamond's glow 
With cheat of kindred fire ? The currents slow, 
And deep, and strong, and stainless, which had rolled 
Through royal veins for ages, what had told 
To them, that hasty heat and lie could show 
As quick and warm a red as theirs .? 

Go free ! 
The sun is breaking on the sea's blue shield 
Its golden lances ; by their gleam I see 
Thy ship's white sails. Go free, if scorn can yield 
Thee freedom ! Then, alone, my love and I — - 
We both are royal ; we know how to die. 



ii8 



The Helen Jackson 



31ul^ 28. 

. . . However great perplexity and difficulty there 
may be in the details of any and every plan possible 
for doing at this late day anything like justice to the 
Indian, however hard it may be for good statesmen 
and good men to agree upon the things that ought to 
be done, there certainly is ... no perplexity what- 
ever, no difficulty whatever, in agreeing upon certain 
things that ought not to be done . . . 

Cheating, robbing, breaking promises — these three 
are clearly things which must cease to be done. 
One more thing, also, and that is the refusal of the 
protection of the law to the Indian's rights of prop- 
erty, " of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 

. . . Till these four things have ceased to be done, 
statesmanship and philanthropy alike must work in 
vain, and even Christianity can reap but small 
harvest. 

A Century of Dishonor. 



Year-Book. 119 



31ul^ 29. 

. . . *'I have always had such a dread of look- 
ing woe-begone, and making everybody around me 
uncomfortable. 1 think that's a sin, if one can 

possibly help it." 

Hetty's Strange History. 



31ul^ 30. 

... It was not only his body that had failed. 
He had lost heart ; and the miles which would have 
been nothing to him, had he walked in the com- 
panionship of hopeful and happy thoughts, stretched 
out wearily as he brooded over sad memories and 

still sadder anticipations. . . . 

Ramona= 



aul^ 3L 

... 'M can no longer walk swiftly, but I must 

walk all the more diligently." 

Ibid. 



Stugu^t 



The sunny hours for very joy are stiU. . 

Covert. 




0UgU0t 1. 

. o . Many men have less absolute belief in a 
soul than in nitric acid. 

The Correlation of Moral Forces. 



2iUgU0t 2. 

. . . When shall we have a Cuvier, a Huxley, 
a Tyndall for the immaterial world, — the realm of 
spiritual existence, moral growth? 

Ibid. 



124 The Helen Jackson 

0ugust 3. 

IN TIME OF FAMINE. 

" She has no heart," they said, and turned away. 
Then, stung so that I wished my words might be 
Two-edged swords, I answered low: — 

" Have ye 
Not read how once when famine held fierce sway 
In Lydia, and men died day by day 
Of hunger, there were found brave souls whose glee 
Scarce hid their pangs, who said, * Now we 
Can eat but once in two days ; we will play 
Such games on those days when we eat no food 
That we forget our pain.' 

" Thus they withstood 
Long years of famine ; and to them we owe 
The trumpets, pipes, and balls which mirth finds good 
To-day, and little dreams that of such woe 
They first were bom. 

" That woman's life I know 
Has been all famine. Mock now if ye dare. 
To hear her brave sad laughter in the air." 



Year- Book. 125 



aiUgU0t 4. 

All great loves that have ever died dropped dead. 

"Dropped Dead." 



aiugU0t 5. 

. . . Estimates are apt to adjust themselves m an 
hour of solitude on a mountain peak. 



The Geysers. 



3lugU0t 6. 

. . . Somewhere (I wish I knew where, and I 
wish I knew from whose lips) I once found this 
immortal sentence: — 

** A woman went through the streets of Alexan- 
dria, bearing a jar of water and a lighted torch, and 
crying aloud, 'With this torch I will burn up 
Heaven, and with this water I will put out Hell, 
that God may be loved for himself alone.' " 

Death-bed Repentance. 



126 The Helen Jackson 



3ugU0t 7. 

... Ah, well, friend Death, good friend thou art ; 
Thy only fault thy lagging gait, 
Mistaken pity in thy heart 
For timorous ones that bid thee wait. 

Do quickly all thou hast to do, 
Nor I nor mine will hindrance make ; 
I shall be free when thou art through ; 
I grudge thee nought that thou must take ! 

Ah, well, friend Death, good friend thou art ; 
I shall be free when thou art through. 
Take all there is — take hand and heart ; 
There must be somewhere work to do. 

Habeas Corpus. 
[Last Poem : August 7, 1885.] 



Year- Book. 127 



^\xq,Vi^t 8. 

. . . The loneliness of intense individuality is the 
loneliest loneliness in the world, — a loneliness which 
crowds only aggravate, and which even the closest 
and happiest companionship can only in part cure. 

Mercy Philbrick's Choice. 



august 9. 

. . . Our nearest and dearest friend, sitting so 
near that we can hear his every breath, can see if 
his blood runs by a single pulse-beat faster to his 
cheek, may yet be thinking thoughts which, if we 
could read them, would break our hearts. 

Hetty's Strange History. 



§ 



128 The Helen Jackson 



jaugu0t 10. 

LAST WORDS. 

Dear hearts, whose love has been so sweet to know, 

That I am looking backward as I go, 

And lingering while I haste, and in this rain 

Of tears of joy am mingling tears of pain ; 

Do not adorn with costly shrub, or tree, 

Or flower, the little grave which shelters me. 

Let the wild wind -sown seeds grow up unharmed, 

And back and forth all summer, unalarmed, 

Let all the tiny, busy creatures creep ; 

Let the sweet grass its last year's tangles keep ; 

And when, remembering me, you come some day 

And stand there, speak no praise, but only say, 

" How she loved us ! 'T was that which made her 

dear ! " 
Those are the words that I shall joy to hear. ^ 



Year-Book. 129 



^ugus;t 11. 

A LAST PRAYER. 

Father, I scarcely dare to pray, 

So clear I see, now it is done, 
That I have wasted half my day, 

And left my work but just begun ; 
So clear I see that things I thought 

Were right or harmless were a sin ; 
So clear I see that I have sought, 

Unconscious, selfish aims to win ; 
So clear I see that I have hurt 

The souls I might have helped to save ; 
That I have slothful been, inert, 

Deaf to the calls thy leaders gave. 
In outskirts of thy kingdoms vast, 

Father, the humblest spot give me ; 
Set me the lowliest task thou hast ; 

Let me repentant work for thee ! 



1 30 The Helen Jackson 



3iugu0t 12. 

EMIGRAVIT. 

With sails full set, the ship her anchor weighs. 
Strange names shine out beneath her figurehead. 
What glad farewells with eager eyes are said ! 
What cheer for him who goes, and him who stays ! 
Fair skies, rich lands, new homes, and untried days 
Some go to seek ; the rest but wait instead 
Until the next stanch ship her flag doth raise. 
Who knows what myriad colonies there are 
Of fairest fields, and rich, undreamed-of gains 
Thick planted in the distant shining plains 
Which we call sky because they lie so far ? 
Oh, write of me, not "Died in bitter pains," 
But " Emigrated to another star ! " 

[Helen Hunt Jackson : 

Died, August 12, 1885.] 



i 



Year-Book. 131 



^vi%mt 13. 

. . . O glorious soul ! there is no dearth 
Of worlds. There must be many better worth 
Thy presence and thy leadership than this. 

Mazzini. 



3iugtt0t 14. 

. . . Who knows that among the ''things pre- 
pared" there may not be this: that, we being set 
free from all hindrances of space, as well as from 
those of time, there will be recognition, converse 
from planet to planet, the universe round, as quick 
and complete as there is now from face to face 
within hand's reach. 

A Colorado Week. 



;9ugUS;t 15. 

... In her, joy was of the spirit, spiritual. Keen 
as were her senses, it was her soul which marshaled 
them all. 

Mercy Philbrick's Choice. 



132 The Helen Jackson 



augU0t 16. 

. . . The very impersonality of her enthusiasms 

and interests . . . was one of her strongest charms. 

. . . She was quite capable of regarding a human 

being as objectively as she would a flower, or a 

mountain, or a star. 

Mercy Philb rick's Choice. 



atugufift 17. 

. . . Physicians tell us that there are in men and 
women such enormous differences in this matter of 
sensitiveness to physical pain that one person may 
die of a pain which would be comparatively slight 
to another. . . . May there not be equally great 
differences in souls, in the matter of sensitiveness to 
moral hurt? 

Ibid. 



Year- Book. 133 



3ugUS?t 18. 

... It seems that in Germany the Catholics think 
more of the day which is called by the name of the 
saint whose name you bear, than they do of your 
birthday. I8th of August, I shall never forget now 
is '' St. Helen's " day. 

(Glad there 's been a St. Helen already, because 
one of a name is enough. So I need not ) 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 

. . . When at last, in lonely grave, 

He laid his lonely head. 
No loving heart more tears need crave ; 
Nowhere more sacred grasses wave ; 
All human hearts to whom he gave 
Grieved like friends' hearts when he was dead. 

The Singer's Priends. 



1 34 The Helen Jackson 



august 19. 

. . . Beautiful moss agates, — daintiest of all Na- 
ture's secret processes in stone. . . . What geology 
shall tell us the whole of their secret? . . . Here 
are microscopic ferns, feathery seaweeds, tassels of 
pines, rippling water-lines of fairy tides, mottled 
drifts of sand or snows, — all drawn in black or 
gray, on and in and through the solid stone. 

Centuries treasured, traced, copied, embalmed 
them. They are too solemnly beautiful to be made 
into ornaments and set swinging in women's ears! 

From Chicago to Ogden. 



august 20. 

. . . The communion of saints is never banished 
from an air it has once filled. 

Holy Cross Village and Mrs Pope's 



Year-Book, 135 



jBugus^t 21. 

. . . The readiness of one's habitations is a per- 
petual marvel in the traveler's life: it is strange 
we can be so faithless about accommodations in 
the next world, when we are so well taken care 
of in this. 

A German Landlady. 



3lUgU0t 22. 

. . . ** I love the Jesu Christ more by Renan as in 
what the Church say for him." 



Ibid. 



0Ugtt0t 23. 

. . . Faces are half -terrifying things to one who 

studies them, such paradoxical masks are they ; only 

one half mask, and the other half bared secrets of a 

lifetime. 

The Katrina Saga. 



136 The Helen Jackson 



2iugu0t 24. 

... A picture has uses, as well as a gazetteer . . . 

Colorado Springs. 



augU0t 25. 

. . . There is more stimulus sometimes in sugges- 
tion than in information ; more delight in the after- 
glow of reminiscence than in the clear detail of ob- 
servation. 

Ibid. 



0UgU0t 26. 

. . . Canyons are known of their lovers. 

To their lovers they reveal themselves; to their 
lovers' eyes they are no more alike than fair women 
are alike in the eyes of their worshipers. 

Boulder Canyon. 



Year- Book, 137 



augUfi^t 27. 

. . . How many people are there who habitually 
speak to a boy of ten, twelve, or fourteen, with 
the same civility as to his sister, a little younger or 
older ? 

"Boys not Allowed." 

— ♦— 

3iUSU0C 28. 

. . . Dear, blessed, noisy, rollicking, tormenting, 
comforting Boy! . . . 

Except for him, how would errands be done, 
chairs brought, nails driven, cows stoned out of our 
way, letters carried, twine and knives kept ready, 
lost things found, luncheon carried to picnics, three- 
year-olds that cry led out of meeting, butterflies and 
birds' nests and birch-bark got, the horse taken 
round to the stable, borrowed things sent home, — 

and all with no charge for time.? 

Ibid. 



138 Year- Book. 



0ugu5t 29. 

. . . Chance is not the word when God be- 
friends. . . . 

The Singer's Friends. 



3ag;a0t 30. 

. . . Among the Etrurians, it seems, the horse was 
an emblem of the passage of the soul to the other 
world ; from which it is fair to infer that break-neck 
riding and driving are not modem inventions. 

A Morning in the Etruscan Museum in the Vatican. 



flugUSt 31 

. . . Nowhere in kind-hearted, simple Germany 
do human beings pass by other human beings, as we 
do in America, without so much as a turn of the head 
to show recognition of humanity in common. 

The Good Staff of Pleasure. 







^%^ n' , '^ . 



^tpttwbtT. 

Tbegaldtm rod isydlam, 

Tkt €orm is tmndmg 
T; ' : im ^#U ordbards 

Th^^mi. Msifrimga 

Artcu '^smm; 

t^dmsfy : ' jstd 

UsMd 

Tkesedgc 

Amdasti 

From doKf lames od wm: 

Ttggtmfe^smBiiod: 

AimoomOt roads aUf 



BpaaOistlmdtpUkems 
Sffjtmbii d^gfs art hr-' 

Wig rsfcrf^: 



September i. 

. . . We owe something to those who love us: 
we owe it to them not to disappoint them. 

Mercy Philbrick's Choice. 



... I know not with what body come 
The saints. But this I know, my Paradise 
Will mean the resurrection of her eyes. 

Her Eyes. 



^tpttmhtt 3. 

. . . "'t ain't never tew late fur ennything but 
oncet, 'n' yer can't tell when thet time 's come till 
it 's past 'n' gone." 

» Ramona. 

September 4. 

. . . The reverent love for mountains is like a 
reverent love for a human being, — reticent, afraid 
of the presumptuousness of speech. 

Colorado Springs. 



142 The Helen Jackson 

g)eptember 5. 

. . . The truth is, that one should never see \hi 
Coliseum and the tomb of Cecilia Metella before 
seeing the ruins on the Rhine ; after them, nothing 
else this side of Palestine can look like more than a 
middle-aged house " out of repair." 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



September 6. 

. . . Above all, one should not come from Tyrol 

down the Rhine; remember that, all of you who 

mean Rhine and Tyrol some day. Go to the Tyrol, 

up the Rhine, and then perhaps you will get a Rhine! 

I honestly own I have not had any. 

Ibid. 



g>eptnnber 7. 

. . . The wild grape, lawless master of every 
situation. . . . 



Hide-and-Seek Town. 



Year- Book, 143 



^tpttmhtt 8. 

CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN. 
By easy slope to west as if it had 
No thought, when first its soaring was begun, 
Except to look devoutly to the sun, 
It rises and has risen, until glad. 
With light as with a garment, it is clad. 
Each dawn, before the tardy plains have won 
One ray; and after day has long been done 
For us, the light doth cling reluctant, sad 
To leave its brow. 

Beloved mountain, I 
Thy worshiper as thou the sun's, each morn 
My dawn, before the dawn, receive from thee ; 
And think, as thy rose-tinted peaks I see. 
That thou wert great when Homer was not born. 
And ere thou change all human song shall die ! 



144 The Helen Jackson 



^eptftnber 9. 

... As for red, it has always been to me like the 
key-note of a universe of hidden things, like a very 
spell in the air. . . . Wonderful color, which makes 
such road for itself through space ! 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



g^eptember lo. 

. . . Our faces are the clothes of our souls ; and 
the strange thing is, that the soul's clothes always 
show what shape the souls have. 

The body's clothes are quite different. You can 
have clothes made for the body which will quite 
conceal its shape ; it may be deformed and ugly to 
look at, and yet good clothes, rightly made, can 
almost cover up the deformity. 

But not so with the face, which is the outside 

garment of the soul. 

Kicking against Pricks. 



Year- Book, 145 



September 11. 

. . . The next picture was of a high mountain 
with snow half-way down its sides, and a great 
many lower mountains all around it. This was 
called Pike's Peak. 

" Oh, papa ! " said Nelly, ** could we live where 
we could see that mountain all the time?" 

" Perhaps so, Nell," answered her father, smiling 
at her eagerness : " would you like to ? " 

Nelly was looking at the picture intently, and did 

not reply for a moment. Then she said : " Papa, 

/ think it would keep us good all the time to look 

at that mountain." 

Nelly's Silver Mine. 



. . . Pike's Peak . . . whose tints shall be fiery 
red, golden yellow, or deep purple blue, according as 
you see them : fiery red at dawn, yellow in the first 
flood of sunrise, and purple just after the sun has set. 

A Symphony in Yellow and Red. 



10 



146 Tbe Helen Jackson 



^eptnnbcr 12. 

. . . The lands are lit 
With all the autumn blaze of Golden-rod ; 
And everywhere the Purple Asters nod 
And bend and wave and flit. 

Asters and Golden-rod. 

§)eptember 13. —♦^ 

. . . We know no face till it smiles. If the smile 

is a true smile, the face is transfigured to us forever. 

A Symphony in Yellow and Red. 



g^eptmtber 14. — ■♦— 

. . . What strange audacity of reverence there 

seems in the way the Spaniard has set the name of 

his Christ everywhere! 

Ibid, 

g^eptembtr 15. ~*^ 

..." Old age is old age, soften it how you will ; 
and youth is youth ; and youth is beautiful, and old 
age is ugly." 

Hetty's Strange History. 



Year-Book. 

^tpttvnbtt 16. 

. . . If you kick against the pricks of life, every 
te leaves its mark on your face; and if you keep 
on fackm,, that is, if you keep on fretting, anS 
whmmg and teasing, and making a fuss about 

.ngs ha can't be helped, by and by your face will 
b a full of ugly lines and marks which are just 
1 ke the rags and tatters which would come on your 
clothes If you plunged through a bramble-bed everv 
day And you can mend the clothes ; but you can't 
possibly mend a face. 

Kicking against Pricks. 

^tpttmhst 17. 

• • . One secret and one spell 
All true things have. No sunlight ever fell 
With sound to bid flowers open. Still and swift 
Come sweetest things on earth. 

How Was It? 



148 The Helen Jackson 



September 18. 

. . . Who is responsible for the inappropriate 
name Garden of the Gods, I do not know; one 
more signally unfitting could hardly have been 
chosen. Fortress of the Gods, or Tombs of the 
Giants, would be better. 

A Symphony in Yellow and Red. 



S^eptember 19. 

... I doubt if one ever loved the Garden of the 
Gods at first sight. 

One must feel his way to its beauty and rareness, 

must learn it like a new language ; even if one has 

known nature's tongues well, he will be a helpless 

foreigner here. I have fancied that its speech was to 

the speech of ordinary nature what the Romany is 

among the dialects of the civilized, — fierce, wild, 

free, defiantly tender. 

Ibid. 



Year-Book, 149 



September 20. 

. . . Mere separations weigh 

As dust in balances of love. The death 

That kills comes only by dishonor. 

Died. 



g^eptember 2L 

. . . You are three hours going from Truckee to 
Lake Tahoe, and it is so steadily up hill that you 
begin to wonder long before you get there why the 
lake does not run over and down. At last you turn 
a sharp corner, and there lies the lake, only a few 
rods off. 

What color you see it depends on the hour and 
the day. 

It has its own calendars — its spring-times and 

winters, its dawns and darknesses — incalculable by 

almanacs. 

Lake Tahoe. 



1 50 The Helen Jackson 



September 22. 

. . . That is the thing that grieves one most in 
Europe, — that the pictures will, in spite of you, 
wipe each other out. 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



g)eptember 23. 

. . . There is no place in the world where human 
nature shows to such sad disadvantage as in waiting- 
rooms at railway stations, especially in the *' Ladies' 
Room." 

In the " Gentlemen's Room " there is less of that 
ghastly, apathetic silence which seems only explain- 
able as an interval between two terrible catastrophes. 
Half an Hour in a Railway Station. 



Year- Book. 151 



September 24. 

... At sunset . . . down into our own beloved 
plains. The first glimpse of their immeasurable 
distance was grander than all we had journeyed 
to see. 

Their mystic vanishing line, where earth and sky 
seem one, only because eyes are too weak to longer 
follow their eternal curves, always strikes upon my 
sight as I think there would fall upon the ear the 
opening perfect chord of some celestial symphony, 
— a celestial symphony which we must forever 
strain to hear, must forever know to be resounding 
just beyond our sense, luring our very souls out of 
this life into the next, from earth to heaven. 

A Colorado Week. 



152 Tbe Helen Jackson 



g)fptcmber 25. 

. . . Come when they may, wait long as they 

will, give what warnings they can, rainy days are 

always interruptions. 

Rainy Days. 



September 26. 

. . . Show me a dozen men and women in the 
early morning of a rainy day, and I will tell by 
their words and their faces who among them is rich 
and who is poor, — who has much goods laid up for 
just such times of want, and who has been spend- 
thrift and foolish. 

Ibid. 



September 27. 

. . . Love knows the face true fealty doth wear, 
The pulse that beats unchanged by alien air. 
Or hurts, or crimes, until the loved one dies. 

Fealty. 



Year- Book, 153 



September 28. 

... I think it was Dr. Johnson who said that 
happiness had only these ingredients : — 

1. Health. 

2. A little more money than you need. 

3. A little less time than you want. 
" A little less time than you want ? " 

That means, always to have so many things you 
want to see, to have, and to do, that no day is quite 
long enough for all you think you would like to get 
done before you go to bed. 

"A Good Time." 



g^ejptember 29. 

. . . There is not a " dull " spot on this earth, not 

one ; and there ought not to be a " dull " moment in 

any human being's life, not one. The barrenest 

place you can find has enough in it for a man to 

study for his whole lifetime . . . 

Ibid. 



154 Year-Book. 



g)eptcmbfr 30. 

. . . Who is the '* Great Foss " ? 

Ah ! that is the question which pressed upon our 
minds when friends said and friends wrote and 
friends reiterated: "Be sure and drive with Foss. 
That is the great thing, after all, in the trip to the 
Geysers." All our cross -questioning failed to elicit 
anything in regard to this modern Jehu, except 
the fact that he was in the habit of driving six 
horses at full gallop around a right-angled cor- 
ner, and not upsetting his wagon. This seemed to 
us an equivocal recommendation of a driver on a 
very dangerous road. 

Nevertheless, we humbly entreated that we might 
take our full share of the delicious risk of broken 
legs and necks, and be able to come away saying 
that we too had gone at full gallop around right- 
angled corners of narrow roads, with the " daring 
champion reinsman of the world," as an enthusi- 
astic writer has called Mr. Foss. 

The Geysers. 




QuTOBiin. 



<©ctoBer. 

— »— 

O suns and skies and clouds of June, 

And flowers of June together. 
Ye cannot rival for one hour 

October s bright blue weather ^ 
When all the lovely wayside things 

Their white-winged seeds are sowing, 
And in the fields, still green and fair. 

Late aftermaths are growing ; 
When springs run low, and on the brooks. 

In idle golden freighting. 
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush 

Of woods, for winter waiting; 
When comrades seek sweet country haunts. 

By twos and twos together, 
And count like misers hour by hour, 

October's bright blue weather. 
O suns and skies and flowers of June, 

Count all your boasts together, 
Love loveth best of all the year 

October's bright blue weather. 

October's Bright Blue Weather. 



(October i. 

. . . Words are less needful to sorrow than to joy. 

Ramona. 



(October 2. 

. . . Places have their affinities to men, as much 
as men to each other; and fields and lanes have 
their moods also. I have brought one friend to 
meet another friend, and neither of them would 
speak; I have taken a friend to a hillside, and I 
myself have perceived that the hillside grew dumb, 
and its face clouded. 

Hide-and-Seek Town. 



(Bctohtt 3. 

. . . Gray days surprised us, revealing new tints 
and more gorgeous heats in the colors ; we had un- 
thinkingly believed that sunshine helped instead of 
hindering. In this was a lesson. 

The Miracle Play of 1870. 



158 The Helen Jackson 



(October 4. 

... In the field of literature we find a hysteria 
as widespread, as undetected, as unmanageable as 
the hysteria which skulks and conquers in the field 
of disease. 

Hysteria in Literature. 



(October 5. 

. . . The worst manifestations of this disease are 
found in so-called religious writing. 



Ibid. 



iDctober 6. 

. . . We must believe that sooner or later there 
will come a time in which silence shall have its dues, 
moderation be crowned king of speech, and melo- 
dramatic, spectacular, hysterical language be consid- 
ered as disreputable as it is silly. 

Ibid. 



Year- Book, 159 



October 7. 

BURNT SHIPS. 

O Love, sweet Love, who came with rosy sail 
And foaming prow across the misty sea! 
O Love, brave Love, whose faith was full and free 
That lands of sun and gold, which could not fail, 
Lay in the west; that bloom no wintry gale [be. 
Could blight, and eyes whose love thine own should 
Called thee, with steadfast voice of prophecy, 

To shores unknown ! 

O Love, poor Love, avail 

Thee nothing now thy faiths, thy braveries ; 

There is no sun, no bloom ; a cold wind strips 

The bitter foam from off the wave where dips 

No more thy prow; the eyes are hostile eyes ; 

The gold is hidden ; vain thy tears and cries ; 

O Love, poor Love, why didst thou burn thy ships ? 



i6o Tbe Helen Jackson 



(October a 

... A tree is the only living thing which can 

keep the secret of its own age, is it not ? Nobody 

can tell within a hundred or two of years anything 

about it so long as the tree can hold its head up. 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



(October 9. 

... If we have n't an international anything else, 
we have very nearly an international costume for 
the masculine human creature ; and it is as ugly 
and unpicturesque a thing as malignity itself could 
devise. 

Ibtd. 



(October lO. 

... No man knows where his neighbor's prison 

lies. 

Friends of the Prisoners. 



Year- Book, i6i 



((October u. 

. . . How dare we any human deed arraign ; 
Attempt to reckon any moment's cost ; 
Or any pathway trust as safe and plain 
Because we see not where the threads have crossed ? 

Crossed Threads. 



ii^ctober 12. 

. . . We think we are quite sure that it is a fool- 
ish little prayer, when people pray to have torn lace 
made whole. But it would be hard to show the 
odds between asking that, and asking that it may 

rain, or that the sick may get well. 

Ramona. 



(^ttdbtt 13. 

... A nation that steals and lies and breaks 
promises will no more be respected or unpunished 
than a man who steals and lies and breaks promises. 

A Century of Dishonor. 
II 



1 62 The Helen Jackson 



(October 14. 

. . . The tears of those who reckoned me their own 

A little space will wet 
The grass : but soon all saddened days 
Count up to comforted and busy years : 
All living men must go their ways 
And leave their dead behind. The tideless light 
Of sun and moon and stars, — silence of night 
And noise of day, and whirling of the great 

Round world itself, — yea. 
All things which are and are not work to lay 

The dead away. 
The crumbling of the stone, more late, 
The sinking of the little mound 
To unmarked level, where with noisy sound 
Roam idle and unwitting feet, 
Least tokens are and smallest part 

Of the oblivion complete 

Which wraps a human grave. 

Resurgam. 



Year- Book. i6 



o 



<&tt<s\itX 15. 

• . • Enjoyment can be rarefied, like air, so that 
Its measures of time grow meaningless, and seem 
talse, as do tlie measures of distance in the upper air. 

A Colorado Week. 

©ttober le. 

... I confess that on rainy mornings in country 
houses, among well-dressed and so-called intelligent 
and Christian people, 1 have been seized with 
stronger disgusts and despairs about the capacity and 
worth of the average human creature, than 1 have 
ever felt in the worst haunts of ignorant wickedness. 

Rainy Days. 

— ♦— 

^ttOhtt 17. 

. . . Everything depends on standpoint. . . . 

San Francisco. 



1 64 The Helen Jackson 



(Dctober 18. 

... As she entered the Square, . . . Hetty found 
herself surrounded by a crowd of children, each in 
its finest clothes, and each bearing a small pot with 
a flowering-plant in it. 

" For thee ! For thee ! The good saints bless the 
day thou wert bom ! " they all cried, pressing nearer, 
and lifting high their little pots. 

" See my carnation !"..." And my jonquil ! " 
" And my pansies ! " ** And this forget-me-not ! " cried 
the children, growing more and more excited each 
moment; while . . . louder and louder rose the 
chorus : 

" For thee ! For thee ! May the good saints bless 
the day thou wert born ! " 

Hetty's Strange History. 

[Helen Hunt Jackson: 

Born October i8, 1831.] 



Year- Book. 165 



((October 19. 

O hospitable wilderness, 

I know thy secret sign ; 
All human welcome seemeth less 

To me than thine. 
• • • • • 

Such couch, such canopy, such floor. 

Such royal banquet spread ; 
Such music through the open door, 

So little said. 

So much bestowed and understood, 

Such flavored courtesy, 
And only kings of unmixed blood 

For company. 

• • • • • 

O hospitable wilderness. 

For thee I long and pine ; 

All human welcome seemeth less 

To me than thine. 

Locusts and Wild Honey. 



1 66 The Helen Jackson 



(October 20. 

. . . We must have margin y or be uncomfortable 

in everything in life. 

Margin 



(October 2L 

... Is there a greater misery than to be hurried ? 
If we leave ourselves proper margin, we never need 
to be hurried. We always shall be, if we crowd our 
plan. 

'^ Ibid. 



(October 22. 

. . . O Death, the fairest lands beyond thy sea 

Lie waiting, and thy barks are swift and stanch 

And ready. Why do we reluctant launch ? 

And when our friends their heritage have claimed 

Of thee, and entered on it, rich and free. 

Oh, why are we of sorrow not ashamed ? 

Bo» Voyage. 



Year-Book. i6y 



(October 23. 

. . . Finding one's native flowers thousands of 
miles away from home seems to annihilate distance. 
. . . Exile is not exile, if it be to a country where 
the wild rose can grow. 

LiTi'LE Rose, and the House of the Snowy Range. 



((^CtOhtV 24. 

... It is a poor proof of the superiority of en- 
lightened, emancipated, and cultivated intellect, with 
all its fine analyses of what God is not, if it tends 
to hold in scorn or dares to hold in pity the igno- 
rance which is yet so full of spirituality that it 
believes it can even see what God is, and feels safer 
by night and day with a cross at each gable of 
the roof. 

The Village of Oberammergau. 



1 68 The Helen Jackson 



©ctobrr 25. 

. . . O subtile secret of the air, 
Making the things that are not, fair 
Beyond the things that we can reach 
And name with names of clumsy speech ; — 

O subtile secret of the air, 

Heaven itself is heavenly fair 

By help of thee ! 



Distance. 



(October 26. 

. . . *M guess the Lord knows abaout *s well 

haow to fix this world o' hisn 's any on 'em do 

thet 's allers a tryin' to make aout haow He might 

ha' done it." 

The Miracle Play of 1870. 



((October 27. 

. . . Perhaps it is only the highly civilized who 
can appreciate the delights of savagery. 

Wa-ha-toy-a. 



Year- Book. 169 



(October 28. 

, . . There are some spots on earth which seem 
to have a strong personaHty about them, — a charm 
and a spell far beyond anything which mere mate- 
rial nature, however lovely, can exert; a charm 
which charms like the beauty of a human face, and 
a spell which lasts like the bond of a human relation. 

In such spots we can live alone without being 
lonely. 

We go away from them with the same sort of 
sorrow with which we part from friends, and we 
recall their looks with the yearning tenderness 
with which we look on the photographs of beloved 
absent faces. 

The Cradle of Peace. 



170 Year-Book. 



^tttA^tX 29. 

. . . One comes of a sudden into the presence of 
Wordsworth, as a traveler finds some day, upon 
a well-known road, a grand cathedral, into which 
he turns aside and worships, and wonders how it 
happens that he never before saw it. . . . 

Mercy Philb rick's Choice. 



((October 30. 

. . . We recognize tyranny when it wears a 

crown and sits on an hereditary throne. . . . How 

many communities, how many households even, are 

without a tyrant ? 

Private Tyrants. 

(October 31. 

. . . We dreaded the morning. 

And it was the morning of a day which we would 

gladly live over again. 

So false are fears in this life. 

A Colorado Week. 



I^ofaemfier* 



November woods are hare and still ; 
November days are clear and bright ; 
Each noon burns up the morning's chill ; 
The morning's snow is gone by night ; 
Each day my steps grow slow, grow light. 
As through the woods I reverent creep. 
Watching all things lie " down to sleep," 
• • • • • 

November woods are bare and still ; 
November days are bright and good ; 
Life's noon burns up life's morning chill ; 
Life's night rests feet which long have stood ; 
Some warm soft bed, in field or wood. 
The mother will not fail to keep, 
Where we can " lay us down to sleep." 

"Down to Sleep." 



il^obembet i. 

. . . The air is full of whirling leaves, brown and 

yellow and red. 

The show is over. 

The winds, like noisy carpenters, are taking down 

the scenery. 

The Miracle Play of 1870. 



0o\)tmhtt 2. 

... The thing next in beauty to a tree in full 
leaf is a tree bare; its every exquisiteness of shape 
revealed, and its hold on the sky seeming so un- 
speakably assured; and, more than the beauty of 
shape and the outlining on sky, the solemn grace of 
prophecy and promise which every slender twig 
bears and reveals in its tiny gray buds. 

Ibid. 



1 74 The Helen Jackson 



jliobrmber 3. 

. . . Last night, as if in final symphony to the 
play and grand prelude of welcome to the conquer- 
ing winter which draws near, the color spirits took 
possession of the sky, and for three hours shook 
its very folds with the noiseless cadence of their 
motions. There they all were, the green, the pink, 
the fiery red, which we had been daring to touch 
and pick in leaves oflF stems, now floating and dan- 
cing in disembodied ecstasy over our heads, wrapped 
and twined in very light of very light, as in celestial 
garments. Fixed stars seemed reeling in their 
embraces; the whole firmament seemed to furl 
and sway and undulate, as if it might presently be 
borne off like a captured banner in their passing. 
. . . The oldest man here does not remember such 
an aurora. 

It is hard to believe that Lapland itself ever saw 
one more weird, more beautiful. 

The Miracle Play of 1870. 



Year- Book. 175 



. . . The reign of Archelaus is not yet over ; he 
has had many names, and ruled over more and 
more countries, but the spirit of his father, Herod, 
is still in him. 

To-day his power is at its zenith. He is called 
Education; and the safest place for the dear, holy 
children is still Egypt, or some other of the fortunate 
countries called unenlightened. 

The Reign of Archelaus. 



il^obember 6. 

... It is perhaps a question whether the real 
tyrannies in this life are those that are accredited 
as such. 



The Republic of the Family. 



176 The Helen Jackson 



jl^obember 6. 

. . . The subtlest smile is little more than an 
added brightness to the eye and a tremulousness of 
the mouth. One second of time is more than long 
enough for it ; but eternity does not outlast it. 

The Fine Art of Smiling. 



il^obembrr 7. 

O Love is weak 
Which counts the answers and the gains, 
Weighs all the losses and the pains, 
And eagerly each fond word drains 

A joy to seek. 

When Love is strong, 
It never tarries to take heed. 
Or know if its return exceed 
Its gifts ; in its sweet haste no greed, 

No strifes belong. 

Love's Fulfilling. 



Year- Book. i^jy 



. . . The Northern nations of Europe seem to 
have hit upon signally appropriate names for that 
place of torment which in English is called steam- 
boat. 

There are times when simply to pronounce the 
words dampskih or damphaad is soothing to the 
nerves. 

The Katrina Saga. 



jl^obember 9. 

... I should respect customs and custom-houses 
more if they did as they say they will do. As it is, 
to smuggle seems to me the easiest thing in the 
world, as well as the most alluring. I have never 
smuggled because I have never had the means neces- 
sary to do it ; but I could have smuggled thousands 
of dollars worth of goods, if I had had them, 
through every custom-house I have ever seen. 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



12 



1 78 The Helen Jackson 

il^obmibcr 10. 

O feeble, mighty human hand ! 
O fragile, dauntless human heart ! 
The universe holds nothing planned 
With such sublime, transcendent art. 

Habeas Corpus. 



j^obember 11. 

. . . For myself and for those whom I might 
possibly win to love Colorado Springs as I love it, 
I would say simply that it is a town lying due east 
of the Great Mountains and west of the sun. . . . 
Between it and the morning sun and between it and 
the far southern horizon stretch plains which have 
all the beauty of the sea added to the beauty of 
plains. 

Like the sea they are ever changing in color, and 

seem illimitable in distance. 

Colorado Springs. 



Year- Book. i-g 



■ . . Looking westward, we see only mountains. 
Tlieir summits are in the slcies, ten, twelve, four- 
teen thousand feet high. ... The summits are 
sharp, some of them of bare red rock, gleaming 
under the summer sunrise like pyramids of solid 
garnet, yet blue again at sunset, - of a purple blue 
as soft as the purple blue of grapes at their ripest 

Sometimes in winter, they are more beautiful 
still, -so spotless white, stately, and solemn, that 
.f one believes there is a city of angels he must be- 
lieve that these are the towers and gates thereof. 

Colorado Springs. 



i8o The Helen Jackson 



il^obember 13. 

. . . Most earnestly I believe . . . that there is to 
be born of these plains and mountains, all along the 
great central plateaux of our continent, the very best 
life, physical and mental, of the coming centuries. 
... It was in the east that the wise men saw the 
star ; but it was westward to a high mountain, in a 
lonely place, that the disciples were led for the trans- 
figuration ! 

Colorado Springs. 



j^obetnber 11 

. . . Walls rise and close 
Around. No warning shows 
To me, who am but blind, which wall 
Will shelter, and which one will fall 

And crush me in the dust. 
Not that I sinned, but that it must. 

Resurgam. 



Year- Book, iSi 



il^obember 15. 

. . . Water can do a hundred things more beau- 
tif ul with itself than leaping off a precipice ; but the 
world at large does not seem to know it. 

The noise and spatter and froth are what the 
world likes best. 

North Cheyenne Canyon. 



Jl^oljember le. 

..." Believin' 'n' worshippin' 's tew things." 

Ramona. 



Jl^oliember 17. 

. . . Pages have been written about the inquisi- 
tiveness of the rural New Englander ; comparatively 
little has been said about his faculty of reticence at 
will, which is quite as remarkable. 

I doubt if any man can be found to match him 
in a series of evasive and non-committal replies. 

Hide-and-Seek Town. 



'.f 



182 Tbe Helen Jackson 



^otjember la 

AN ARCTIC QUEST. 

O proudly name their names who bravely sail 
To seek brave lost in Arctic snows and seas ! 
Bring money and bring ships, and on strong knees 
Pray prayers so strong that not one word can fail 
To pierce God's listening heart ! Rigid and pale, 
The lost men's bodies, waiting, drift and freeze ; 
Yet shall their solemn dead lips tell to these 
Who find them secrets mighty to prevail 
On farther, darker, icier seas. 

I go 
Alone, unhelped, unprayed-for. Perishing 
For years in realms of more than Arctic snow, 
My heart has lingered. Will the poor dead thing 
Be sign to guide past bitter flood and floe, 
To open sea, some strong heart triumphing ? 



Year- Book, 183 



jliobember 19. 

... I do not understand why travelers make 
such a to-do always about the way women work in 
the fields in Germany. I am sure they are far less to 
be pitied than the women who work in narrow, 
dark, foul streets of cities; and they 'look a thou- 
sand times healthier. 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



i^obember 20. 

. . . We must be all wrong if we are not in sym- 
pathy with the age in which we live. We might as 
well be dead as not keep up with it. But which of 
us does not sometimes wish in his heart of hearts, 
that he had been born long enough ago to have been 
boon companion of his great-grandfather, and have 
gone respectably and in due season to his grave at a 
good jog trot ? 

Jog Trot. 



184 The Helen Jackson 

j^obrmber 2L 

... All is drift 

Of time and chance, and none may stay or sift 

Or know the end of that which is begun. 

Chance. 



jl^oijember 22. 

. . . "They're up every mornin' uv thar lives 

long afore daylight, a feedin' their stock, an' gittin' 

ready fur the day's work. ... I allow the Lawd 

meant some time fur sleepin' ; 'n' I 'm satisfied with 

His times 0' lightin' up." 

Ramona. 



j^obemben: 23. 

... No man can so take a photograph of a land- 
scape as to render and convey the whole truth of it, 
unless he is an artist by nature, and would know 
how to choose the point from which that landscape 

ought to be painted. 

San Francisco. 



Year- Book. 185 



jpobembtr 24. 

. . . The contagion of the haste to be rich is as 
deadly as the contagion of a disease, and it is too 
impatient to take note of facts that might stay its 
fever. 

It is a simple matter of statistics, for instance, that 
in the regions of Georgetown and Central City the 
average miner is poor, while the man who sells him 
potatoes is well off. Yet for one man who will plant 
potatoes, twenty will go into a mine. 

Little Rose, and the House of the Snowy Range. 



il^obember 25. 

. . . Why cannot a mining town be clean, well- 
ordered, and homelike ? I have never seen one such 

in Colorado or in California. 

A Colorado Week. 



i86 The Helen Jackson 



il^obnnber 26. 

. . . ** How very much they seem to have made 

of the devil in the olden time, ma'am, do they not ? " 

remarked Brita, entirely unconscious of the fact that 

she was philosophizing; *' wherever we have been, 

there have been so many things named in his 

honor ! " 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



il^otjember 27. 

Dead Homer from his lost and vanished grave 
Keeps battle glorious still and soldiers brave. 

Songs of Battle. 



i^obember 28. 

. . . This is one of the sweetest mercies of life, 
that **the heart knoweth its own bitterness," and, 
knowing it, can hide it. 



Friends of the Prisoners. 



Year-Book. 187 



/ 
jpotjember 29. * 

... It is very much to be questioned whether, in 
a republic, the people who find themselves tempo- 
rarily lower down in the social scale than they like 
to be or expect to stay, feel, in their consciousness of 
the possibility of rising, half so much pride or satis- 
fying pleasure as do the lower classes in England, 
for instance, in their relations with those whom 
they serve, whose dignity they seem to share by 

ministering to it. 

A Burns Pilgrimage. 



il^obember 30. 

O yesterday. 
My yesterday, thy sorest pain 
Were joy couldst thou but come again, — 

Sweet yesterday. 



GONDOLIEDS. 




liLTiuLli^ 



2Decem6er. 



. . . The beautiful white . . . winter had set in, 
. . . The groves of maple and hickory and beech 
were bare. Their delicate gray tints spread in 
masses over the hillsides like a transparent, gray 
veil, through which every outline of the hills was 
clear, but softened. The massive pines and spruces 
looked almost black against the white of the snow, 
and the whole landscape was at once shining and 
sombre, 

, , , Dreamy and inert and phlegmatic people 
, , . see only the sombreness. 

, , , But to a joyous, brisk, sanguine soul, the 
clear, crisp, cold air is like wine ; and the white- 
ness and sparkle and shine of the snow are like 
martial music, a constant excitement and spell, 

Mercy Philb rick's Choice. 



Wtttmhtv 1. 

. . . Wherever are two hearts, there are the ele- 
ments ready for fate to work its utmost with, for 

^^^^ ^^ ^^^- _^ HiDE-AND-SEEK ToWN. 

SDecember 2. * 

. . . Blindfolded and alone I wait ; 
Loss seems too bitter, gain too late ; 
Too heavy burdens in the load 
And too few helpers on the road ; 
And joy is weak, and grief is strong, 
And years and days so long, so long; 
Yet this one thing I learn to know 
Each day more surely as I go. 
That I am glad the good and ill 
By changeless law are ordered still, 
" Not as I will." 
mtmhttS. -^ "Not AS I WILL." 

. . . Happy people do not need each other as sad 
people do. Mercy Philbrick's Choice. 



192 The Helen Jackson 



SDfccmbcr 4. 

. . . When one sails Lido-ward, ... no glories 
of color in the sky, — no, not even when a day is 
setting, — can long withhold his eyes from the Con- 
vent of San Lazzaro. 

Loveliest of all lovely islands in the Lagoons, it 

seems, in some lights, to be floating, and rising, and 

sinking on the smooth water, like a great red lily, 

with gray battlement calyx folding about it, and a 

fringe of green beneath. 

The Convent of San Lazzaro, in Venice. 



SDecember 5. 

... No sound, unless of a passing oar, inter- 
rupted the quiet. We longed to stay for the rest of 
our lives, and drink cream, and translate good books 
for the benefit of the Armenian nation ; and only 
wished that we had been wicked men and written 
poetry, so that we could make a precedent of Lord 
Byron's having been taken to board there. 

Ibid. 



Year- Book. 193 

SDecembn: 6. 

... It is a cruel thing that laughter should age 
a woman's face almost as much as weeping; but 
it does. 

Hetty's Strange History. 



SDramber 7. 

... I believe that cheeriness is, in the outset, a 
good gift from God at one's birth, very much 
dependent on one's body, and a thing to be more 
profoundly grateful for than all that genius ever 
inspired, or talent ever accomplished. 

This is natural, spontaneous, inevitable cheeriness. 
This, if we were not born with it, we cannot have. 

But next best to this is deliberate, intended, and 
persistent cheeriness, which we can create, can culti- 
vate, and can so foster and cherish, that after a few 
years the world will never suspect that it was not a 
hereditary gift handed down to us from generations. 

Cheery People. 
13 



194 The Helen Jackson 



Dfcnnbrr 8. 

. . . Artistic sensibility and enthusiasm do not 

help a man to order dinner. 

Ah-wah-ne Days. 



jSDfcrmbn: a 

. . . " T don't seem 's if folks need to suffer so 
'n such a world 's this ; things must come out right, 
sooner or later, somehow, if there's any kind o' 
reason 'n any thing. 

" It don't look no ways likely that God set it all a 

goin' jest to make folks miserable ! " 

Zeph. 



. . . Shrewdest of all commanders in the world 
is Love, who makes his recruits recruit themselves. 



Ibid. 



Year-Booh 195 

SDfcember 10. 

. . . Mistaken saints, who thought to save 
Their souls, by making life a grave ! 

The Gift of Grapes. 



©etember u. 

. . . There is in this world a great deal of moral 
color blindness, congenital, incurable. 

Mercy Philb rick's Choice. 



SDecember 12. 

. . . This is always the way, I find, in a day of 
sight-seeing of the historical or memorial order. In 
the morning, heroes are heroes, and their graves are 
shrines. 

By noon, they are nobodies, and you don't care 
where they are buried ; or, at least, you don't believe 
they are buried where people say they are. 

An Afternoon in Memoriam, in Salzburg. 



19^ The Helen Jackson 

2E>fcnnbcr 13. 

THE TEACHER. 

The people listened, with short, indrawn breath, 

And ty^ that were too steady set for tears ; 

This one man's speech rolled off great loads of fears 

From every heart, as sunlight scattereth 

The clouds ; hard doubts, which had been bom of 

death. 
Shone out as rain -drops shine when rainbow clears 
The air. " O teacher," then I said, " thy years. 
Are they not joy ? Each word that issueth 
From out thy lips, doth it return to bless 
Thy own heart many fold ? " 

With weariness 
Of tone he answered, and almost with scorn, 
** I am, of all, most lone in loneliness ; 
I starve with hunger treading out their corn ; 
I die of travail while their souls are born." 



Year-Book, 197 



SDecember vl 

... It is the fourteenth day of December, winter, 
by the calendar. 

Winter, too, to the eye. Ice lies firm-frozen in 
the gutters, and even the low foot-hills are powdered 
with snow. 

. . . Winter by the calendar, winter to the sight 
and touch ; but winter which wooes and warms like 
June. 

. . . When to midwinter at six thousand feet 
above the sea is added the sun of June, the heads 
and hearts of men grow gay as by wine. . . . 

And this is midwinter in Colorado. 

A Winter Morning at Colorado Springs. 



198 The Helen Jackson 



2E>ecember 15. 

. . . Rooms have just as much expression as faces. 
They produce just as strong an impression on us at 
first sight. 

The instant we cross the threshold of a room, we 
know certain things about the person who Hves in it. 
The walls and the floor, and the tables and chairs all 
speak out at once, and betray some of their owner's 
secrets. 

The Expression of Rooms. 



SDecember le. 

. . . When we first take possession of a room, it 
has no especial expression, perhaps, — at any rate, 
no expression peculiar to us; but day by day we 
create its countenance, and at the end of a few years 
it is sure to be a pretty good reflection of our own. 

Ibid. 



Year- Book. 199 

SDrcember 17. 

... The birds must know. Who wisely sings 

Will sing as they ; 
The common air has generous wings, 

Songs make their way. 

The Way to Sing. 

2r>rcember is. 

..." I do declare, I think it ^s a shame to have 
any such thing 's poor-pews. ... It 's borne in on 
me 't ain't Christian. I think the Catholics are lots 
better 'n we are about that, — lots. There ain't any 
thing but poor-pews 'n their churches, 'n' that's the 
way it ought to be, — free to all." 

Zeph. 



SDfcember 19. 

... A mountain has as much personality as a 
man; you do not know one any more than you 
know the other until you have summered and 
wintered him. 

Our New Road. 



2CO The Helen Jackson 



Dfcembrr 20. 

. . . Dainty, sturdy, indefatigable Kimnkinmck, 
gjeen and glossy all the year round, lovely at Christ- 
mas and lovely among flowers at midsummer, as con- 
tent and thrifty on bare, rocky hillsides as in grassy 
nooks, growing in long, trailing wreaths, five feet 
long, or in tangled mats, five feet across, as the rock 
or the valley may need, and living bravely for many 
weeks without water, to make a house beautiful. 

1 doubt if there be in the world a vine I should 
hold so precious, indoors and out. 

The Cradle of Peace. 



... In June it is fragrant with clusters of small 
pink and white bells, much like the huckleberry 
blossom. In December it is gay with berries as red 
as the berries of the holly. Neither midsummer 
heat nor midwinter cold can tarnish the sheen nor 
shrivel the fulness of its leaf. 

It has such vitality that no barrenness, no drought, 
deters it. Our New Road. 



Year- Book. 201 



SDecnnber 21. 

. . . What the people demand, Confess will 

do. . , . 

A Century of Dishonor. 



Pcccmbrr 22. 



. . . The first essential for a cheerful room is — 
Sunshine. Without this, money, labor, taste are all 
thro\vn away. ..." Glorify the room ! Glorify the 
room ! " Sydney Smith used to say of a morning, 
when he ordered every blind thrown open, every 
shade drawn up to the top of the window. 

The Expression of Rooms. 

December 23. — ^►— 



. . . Second on my list of essentials for a cheer- 
ful room, I put — Color. . . . Don't be afraid of 
red. . . . The blind say that they always think red 
must be like the sound of a trumpet ; and I think 
there is a deep truth in their instinct. 

It is the gladdest and most triumphant color 
everywhere. Ibid. 



202 The Helen Jackson 



2E>ccember 24. 

. . . We have bought big boughs of mistletoe to 
hang up over our doors, and propose to kiss each 
other under it. 

It is an uncanny, scrambling -looking thing. I am 
a little afraid of its spidery shape, but the berries are 
lovely. 

If a white currant were to marry a snowberry, 
their babies would be like these. . . . You see 
through them, and you don't ; they quiver, and yet 
are firm-planted as the bough itself ; they are un- 
canny too, like the rest. 

Encyclicals of a Traveler. 



. . . We have thought of putting an advertise- 
ment in the newspapers to the following effect : — 

'' An intelligent American family would like to 
spend the Christmas holidays in an English house, 
where the Christmas customs and festivities will be 
well observed. No objection to noblemen." 

But I fear it is now too late. Ibid. 



Year-Book. 203 



Dffcmber 25. 

O Christmas stars ! your pregnant silentness, 
Mute syllabled in rhythmic light, 
Leads on to-night, 
And beckons, as three thousand years ago 
It beckoning led. 

• • • • 

We have no dread of any shape 
Which darkness can assume or fill ; 
We are not weary ; we can wait ; 
God's hours are never late. 

• • • • 

O Christmas stars ! your pregnant silentness. 

Mute syllabled in rhythmic light, 

Fills all the night. 

A Christmas Symphony. 



204 The Helen Jackson 



SDcccmber 26. 

..." I say not unto thee until seven times, 

but until seventy times seven." " ' Seventy times 

seven ! ' " repeated the preacher. ..." Friend, 

neighbor, husband, wife, how is it? Hast thou 

been hurt by any one four hundred and ninety 

times, and four hundred and ninety times forgiven 

the hurt, — forgiven it, wiped it out.?" 

Zeph. 



SDfcember 27. 

. . . There is a dreadful phrase which you often 
hear among people who have not enough to do, — 
it is " passing time away ; " " killing time," also, 
they sometimes call it. Is n't that a terrible expres- 
sion to come from the lips of a human being, who 
will not have, at the outside, more than seventy or 
eighty years of time ? not half enough to do all that 
a man or woman ought to want to do in this world ! 

"A Good Time." 



Year-Book. 205 



DfCfmber 28. 

... In the south . . . miles and miles of moun- 
tain-tops welded into one long, grand spur, and 
ending at last in a sudden lift, — a distinct and 
separated summit, as straight cut as a pyramid and 
sharper pointed. If it is sunset . . . you will see 
this long spur, welded, forged, fitted, and piled of 
mountain masses, glowing in full light. ... Its sur- 
faces are many-sided, sharp-ridged, as if the very 
mountains had crystallized. 

The faces which turn west are opaline pink, the 
faces which turn east are dusky blue, and the pink 
and the blue change and shift and pale and brighten, 
until the sweet silence of the twilight seems marked 
into rhythms by the mere motions of color. 

It is a sight solemn as beautiful, and the absolute 
soundlessness of the great forest spaces makes the 
solemnity almost overawing. 

The Cradle of Peace. 



2o6 The Helen Jackson 



SDfccmber 29. 

. . . "It's jest a kind er * hit-er-miss' pattren we 
air all on us livin' on; 't ain't much use tryin' ter 
reckon how 't '11 come aout ; but the breadths doos 
fit heaps better 'n yer 'd think ; come ter sew 'em, 't 
ain't never no sech colors ez yer thought 't wuz gwine 
ter be, but it 's allers pooty, allers." . . . 

Ramona. 



H>fcembrr 30. 

... It is very strange, but when our eyes are full 
of tears of love, we can see more clearly than at any 
other time. 

Sometimes I think that if we always looked 
through such tears we could see into Heaven. . . . 

RuNNA Rig. 



Year-Book. 207 



SDecember 31. 

His thoughts were song, his life was singing ; 

Men's hearts like harps he held and smote, 
But in his heart went ever ringing, 

Ringing, the song he never wrote. 

Free at last, and his soul up-soaring, 
Planets and skies beneath his feet, 

Wonder and rapture all out-pouring, 
Eternity how simple, sweet ! 

Higher the singer rose and higher. 
Heavens, in spaces, sank like bars ; 

Great joy within him glowed like fire. 
He tossed his arms among the stars, — 

** This is the life, past life, past dying ; 

I am I, and I live the life : 
Shame on the thought of mortal crying ! 

Shame on its petty toil and strife ! 



2o8 Year- Book. 



" Why did I halt, and weakly tremble ? " 
Even in heaven the memory smote, — 

" Fool to be dumb, and to dissemble ! 
Alas for the song I never wrote ! " 

The Song He Never Wrote. 



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